


Defy the Wasteland

by Esselle



Series: Wasteland [5]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fallout, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Blood and Violence, Childhood Trauma, Fake Science, First Time, Gun Violence, M/M, Minor Shimizu Kiyoko/Yachi Hitoka, Minor Ushijima Wakatoshi/Tendou Satori, Past Brainwashing, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-02-13 03:16:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12974670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esselle/pseuds/Esselle
Summary: 'There were so many things Shouyou didn't know: why he'd had to run. Why the Overseer wanted to kill him. What he'd done to cause the deaths of so many.But one thing he did know for certain.He would leave the Vault behind, and he would never go back. Because finally, he had entered the Wasteland.'--After confronting Shouyou's past, Kageyama now must reckon with the present—Shouyou is gone, and the danger of the Vault still casts a long shadow over him, drawing them both into its depths. Kageyama will stop at nothing to find Shouyou, fight for him, to save him.Fortunately, he won't have to fight alone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The final arc of Wasteland AU is here... please note tags/warnings, it's a bit of a bumpy ride ahead!

The sky was blue.

The little boy knew that much, at least. It was hard to tell what shade of blue, exactly, from the staticky television screen on the wall of his nursery room. But he'd watched it through the bars of his crib, and then sat in front of it from the time he could crawl. He stared at it for as long as he could get away with.

The images the TV cycled through were soundless and changed order all the time, but every now and again, it would appear. Blue, blue, blue, sometimes staying for a few precious seconds, other times allowing him to stare for several minutes. And then it was gone again.

He'd asked his caregiver what the blue was, one day, and she told him it was sky. But he could never see the real sky. Nobody knew what color it was now, but if he ever were to see it, it would mean he had been very, very bad. Bad enough to have been sent out into the Wasteland.

The Wasteland was very, very bad, too. They told him he wouldn't come back if he was sent out. He must behave, because the Overseer didn't want to lose him.

The boy’s favorite color was blue; all his crayons stayed unused, except for the blue ones, as he colored page after blank page wholly. Blue.

Eventually, his caregiver took away his crayons because he was wasting some and ignoring others; an "inefficient division of his time." He didn't know what these words meant.

The next day, the television set no longer showed the image of the sky, no matter how long he waited. He cried and cried, but it never came back.

*

When he turned five, they started calling him something other than "child." This new word was a name, he learned; people needed names, so they knew who they were. The Overseer had chosen the name _Hinata_ for him.

Shortly after this, Hinata was brought to the over-5 barracks, where he began to understand why he needed a name. Before, when it had only been him, and his room, and his caregiver, they hadn't needed names, because they had only spoken to each other. But now, suddenly, there were others. More children. Some his age, but many older, and all of them needed names, so they could talk to each other.

Talking was encouraged. Whenever Hinata talked to his caregiver, she would listen very carefully, sometimes writing what he said down. The other children didn't write anything Hinata said down, but he thought some of them might be listening even more carefully than his caregiver. The ones who listened well were the favorites. They got extra food, sometimes, or things to color with, or books. They didn't need to write things down to remember them.

Other things were discouraged. Hinata knew, already, that touching was bad, was wrong. His caregiver had never touched him, for as long as he could remember. When he was younger, he had tried, unknowingly, but had been told not to do so. He was warned to be very careful where he put his hands and to be aware of the space his body occupied. He had had a difficult time of it at first; something in him felt drawn to others, to expressing what he meant with his whole body, by reaching out. But it was easy with only one person, and he got used to it. The pure white robes they all wore, covering them from their necks to wrists and down to their ankles, were a good reminder.

Still, it was much harder, with so many other children, sleeping in their rows of bunk beds, sharing the recreation room and the mental stimulation games. But even though he had to work harder not to touch, it wasn't all bad. He liked being able to listen and talk to so many new people. Most of them had been like him before over-5; growing up left to their own devices, apart from occasional visits from their caregiver.

Some of them had had different types of toys to play with growing up, and some of them seemed to not have had any toys before at all. Some of them didn't want to say anything about what things had been like before over-5, even though Hinata begged and begged. He wanted to know what it was like; what places he didn't know about and lives that weren't his own were like.

"But why?" he asked one day, of one of the girls he talked to most often. "Why" was a question he was beginning to learn was tricky. His caregiver had not liked it; and some of the older children didn't, either. But the younger ones mostly seemed confused by it, if accepting. "Why won't you tell me? I've told you all about me."

"Because you were good," Yachi said softly. She reminded Hinata of a small animal he'd seen in picture books—a bunny, or perhaps a mouse.

"Huh?" Hinata asked. "What's that mean?"

Yachi didn't look up at him. She tucked a strand of her wispy yellow hair behind her ear to keep it out of her eyes as she colored a piece of paper. Yachi liked to color a lot, maybe even more than Hinata did.

"You weren't bad," she said. "You always had crayons and books and even the TV. But not me."

This seemed impossible to Hinata. Yachi had been bad? He knew his caregiver hadn’t liked when he misbehaved, and he knew if he was bad enough, the Overseer might get involved. But he couldn't imagine that ever happening to Yachi. She was nice, and she liked to smile, and she played with Hinata all the time. He couldn't imagine that she might have been…

"Were you…" he swallowed, "punished?"

Yachi stopped coloring. She still didn't look up. Then she nodded.

Hinata's arms prickled. In order to be punished, she would have had to have done something really, really bad.

"But—" she said, voice shaking, "I'm better now. I don't do it anymore. I get things _right."_

Hinata frowned. "Get _what_ right?"

"The questions," Yachi whispered, "I answer them right, now. I got better."

"What do you mean?"

"The questions," she repeated. "No one asks you?"

Slowly, Hinata shook his head. "What happens… if you get them wrong?"

Yachi finally looked up at him. Her eyes were very shiny. "I don't get to color. Or read. Or eat."

Hinata stared at her. Even when his crayons had been taken away, or he'd tried to touch the caregiver, they'd still fed him.

"Yachi," he said, "I don't think you're bad. I know that you tried really hard."

Yachi's mouth wobbled when she tried to smile at him. It made Hinata’s heart feel awful, and without thinking, he reached out—forgetting, as he always did when he felt that pull, that he shouldn't.

"Hinata," someone said from behind him, and he snatched his hand back, his heart pounding fiercely.

"I'm sorry," he said instantly, as one of their teachers came into view. She was smiling.

"For what?" she asked.

Maybe she hadn't seen, Hinata thought. And he didn't want to get both himself and Yachi in trouble.

"N-nothing," he said.

"It's nearly afternoon," the teacher said. "I think now would be a good time for lunch, and then independent studying, don't you?"

They packed up their things and were led back to their rooms, where they allowed Hinata to keep coloring. But even though he'd been told it was a good time for it, lunch never came.

Dinner didn't, either, and so he kept coloring, on and on, blinking back tears. Independent studying was very effective. The lesson had been learned.

*

Some kinds of touching were much worse than others, Hinata learned.

It was considered one of their worst crimes to engage in these sorts—romantic, or worse, sexual gestures. Even touching themselves for pleasure wasn't allowed, so severe was the offense—that could lead to addiction, and addiction to risks, to infractions.

They had nowhere to go but the Vault, and intercourse spread impurities and disease, contaminated the people involved beyond repair, so they could never properly serve the Vault. It could result in a natural birth, one of the greatest crimes of all. Hinata had heard whispers, had heard once of a pair in the over-35 barracks disappearing overnight. The woman, the rumors said, had been pregnant.

Instead of seeking a release by these disgusting means, they were encouraged to focus on their training. Past the over-5 barracks, once Hinata had passed on into over-10, his child to early teen years were spent discovering and honing his talents. They all had talents, said the messages from the Overseer. To be of use to the community, it was their responsibility to understand how to use them.

Hinata was small, and not particularly strong. He wasn't smart. But he had discovered one thing—he was fast. The reflex games they used to test him early on were quite fun, but too easy. Soon they had to create new ones; games of catching, dodging, seeing how fast and how long he could run. His teachers talked about things like his "endurance" and "agility" excitedly.

Often, he found the days they were happiest with him were after training sessions he couldn't quite remember, even if he struggled. Sometimes, he could only remember flashes of them; other times, it was like waking up suddenly after going to sleep. It was a side effect of the rigorous workout, his teachers said. It meant he was doing especially well, so he began to look forward to those days.

While Hinata liked his training, as he got older, he learned it wasn't the same for everyone.

Yachi was smart. She had found her talent early on, and even from the time they had first met, spent an immense amount of time developing it—days upon days, sometimes, taking tests and answering questions, always with the emphasis on getting everything right. Hinata, so far, hadn't had to worry about being right. Only fast, something he already was.

The second incident happened when they were halfway through over-10—a little over twelve years old. It had been several days since Hinata had last seen Yachi, but this wasn't too strange. But when she finally appeared again in the recreation area, something wasn't right.

"Yachi, hi! Yachi!" he called out when he saw her blonde head of hair, bent over a tabletop. She didn't react. "Yachi…?"

He moved around the side of the table, where he could see her face. His smile faded.

Yachi's face was pale, but her eyes were red-rimmed. Perspiration beading on her forehead and cheeks, her hair stuck to her skin. She was sketching something; Yachi was a very good artist, but whatever she was drawing now seemed to have no real form. She wasn't even looking at the paper. Her eyes jerked from side to side and her pencil scribbled aimlessly. Her lips were moving as she mumbled something too softly for him to hear.

"Hey, Yachi… are you okay?" Hinata asked.

".…wrong answer…" was all he managed to catch of whatever she was saying.

"What? What's the wrong—"

"—no wrong answer. There's no wrong answer," she whispered. She didn't seem to be talking to him. "There's no wrong answer. There's no wrong answer. There's no—"

"H-hey," Hinata said, "okay. Um—if you can't be wrong that's good, isn't it—"

"There's no wrong answer," Yachi said again, gripping her pencil tighter, her strokes across the paper becoming more forceful. "There's no wrong answer—so why can't I get it _right—"_

With a start, Hinata saw a smear of red streak across the paper, growing larger as she drew, and drew, pencil _skritch_ -ing across the page. The noise burrowed into his head, and a new one began to grow, a shrill sound like a whine, or like feedback, from a speaker.

"Yachi," he said, "you're _bleeding—_ I'm going to get help—" He started to stand.

 _"Don't!"_ Yachi hissed suddenly. _"No, Shouyou."_

He froze. He'd never heard that name before—never heard those sounds. He felt locked in place, unable to move.

"Who… is Shouyou?" he asked. His voice didn't sound like his own.

"You," Yachi said. Her bloodshot eyes were locked onto his. "They didn't want me to know, but now I do. I was trying to find the answers…"

"Why didn't they want you to know?"

"Because it's the real you," Yachi said.

"The real me," Hinata repeated. He wasn't sure why—but suddenly, his thinking was clearer. He knew something was wrong. He knew he had to get through to Yachi. “What's the real you?”

She stared at him for a long time, before murmuring: "Hitoka."

As the sound—the name—left her lips, she blinked. Her eyes focused, finally, on Hinata in front of her. She gasped.

 _"Ah—"_ Instead of saying anything more, she looked at her hands. Finally, she let go of the pencil. "It hurts—Hinata, my _hands—"_

Without thinking, without worrying about the consequences, Hinata reached out and grabbed her wrists. It caused a sharp, sudden sensation; the feedback that had been droning inside him cut out, leaving him feeling empty. But he ignored the feeling as he flipped her hands over to see what was wrong.

Her palms were raw and bloody, shaking in his grasp. How long had she been  _sitting_ there, just drawing, and drawing, for this to happen, he wondered. Yachi sobbed, teeth clenched against the pain, and he threw caution to the winds, ignored his fear.

"Help!" he shouted. Heads turned in their direction. "Help, we—she needs a doctor! Somebody, help us—"

The instructors were on them in seconds. They saw Hinata holding her hands. They were separated immediately.

"Please help her!" he cried, as they were pulled apart. And then, he thought to save her. "It was my fault!"

Yachi looked horrified. "Sho—"

"Yachi!" he cut her off sharply, and she fell silent, his true name dying on her tongue. "I'm sorry. I was just worried. I'm sorry I touched you."

His confession would have to be enough. He knew she might still be punished. But he would bear the full force of it.

They put him in isolation. One room, no windows, complete darkness with the door closed. He had never been punished like this before. They fed him irregularly and he lost track of time, started having nightmares whether his eyes were open or closed. His voice died away, ruined by crying.

And then, one dark, interminable moment, a television set appeared. He had no idea where it came from—he woke and it was there, set into the wall. Flickering static. There were no instructions. He didn't know what he was supposed to do with it.

There was no wrong answer. But could he find the right one?

For days, he watched it. Sometimes it was only static—other times, images. The same as from his childhood. A stuffed animal. Water running from a faucet. An apple. And then—

_There._

Hinata stood and stumbled to the TV in the wall. He got closer, closer, until his nose was touching it, his eyes wide and unblinking. Waiting.

"There," he said, when it came again. Fast. Faster than the flickering static. It came and went faster than he could blink—a tenth, maybe a thirtieth of a second. A single frame.

_Sky._

It was back. It was back. He had never forgotten it.

"There," he said again, as it flashed by once more. And then it was gone again for several minutes. And then— "There."

Every time it appeared, whether it took minutes, or hours, he acknowledged it. He didn't know how long he stood there, watching, waiting.

When the door to the isolation cell finally opened again, the hall lights beyond blinding him, he knew he had answered correctly.

The Overseer had forgiven him.

*

The day before he completed his fifteenth year, and the day before he went to the over-15 barracks, Hinata was offered an exciting opportunity. He was to follow one of the caretakers around on their duties to observe them, to see if it might be work suited for him when he came of age to be placed into a job position. When the caregiver came to fetch him, Hinata was surprised. He knew her; she had been the one in charge of him before he was still unnamed, not yet old enough to live in the barracks.

She smiled at him, but it seemed strained, and he realized she was sweating. He was reminded, vividly, of the incident that had taken place two years ago—the one with Yachi, that had gotten him sent to isolation. He swallowed his concern, an _are you alright_ dying on his tongue.

They visited a few of the rooms—he was only permitted to watch, not interact, with the children. He saw how the babies were changed and fed safely, without being handled or touched. If the child was over the age of two, he stayed outside the room, watching through an observation window, so they couldn't see him.

He thought he might like being a caregiver, but wondered if it would be difficult, to have to keep so much distance when some of the children, like him, hadn't learned yet not to seek out physical contact. He knew how hard that could be, but he had gotten better at restricting himself. His mistakes were minimal, now.

They reached yet another room, and the caregiver stopped in front of the door. She did not open it, and Hinata looked at her after long enough had passed that he began to wonder.

She was staring at the door, her hand resting on the knob. It was trembling, just slightly; enough that Hinata could only just detect the rattling of the knob in the doorframe.

The question surfaced in Hinata's mind again, and this time he opened his mouth to ask it. "Are you—"

"Community member number 1743," the caregiver said abruptly, reading off from her clipboard. "Age eight months, twenty-four days. You may accompany me to observe."

They entered the room, and the caregiver began the routine. Hinata watched, dutifully. It was when they were halfway through the feeding that it happened.

A high, keening noise sounded so loudly between his ears that he felt like his head was splitting in two. It was high-pitched; so shrill that he wasn't even sure he was truly hearing it. He tried to cover his ears, but it did nothing to block the sound. When he fell to his knees, bracing his fall with his hands, he left red handprints on the ground. He could feel warm blood trickling down the sides of his face. Hinata screamed. Then he realized someone else was screaming with him.

He snapped his eyes open and was met by a terrifying, bewildering scene. The caregiver had fallen back against the crib. And between her and Hinata, uncoiling and unwinding on the tile floor, was an animal Hinata had only seen in textbooks and once, the television set.

It was called a snake.

There was no way one could have found its way inside the Vault. But there was no denying that it was a snake that slithered and hissed before him. It was grey and slender, but otherwise enormous—longer than a man was tall, swaying up until it had raised part of its sinuous body off the ground. All its attention was focused on his old caregiver.

"Hinata—" she said, as he stared at her, horrified.

"Run," he choked.

"H-help me," she pleaded, tears streaming down her face. "Save me—"

"I—" Hinata started to say, and the snake moved first.

It was _fast._ He'd never seen anything so fast in his life, but the snake was so quick it was startling. It snapped forward, fangs drawing blood where they sank into the caregiver's neck, and she shrieked, legs kicking reflexively. But this was not enough to pacify it. With a whipping motion punctuated by a hiss, it struck again, and again, three, four times, biting into her throat, her cheek, shredding her flesh.

"Stop, _stop—"_ Hinata screamed. His head still felt wrenched open but he struggled to his feet, and the snake turned on him, and he fought to breathe under its beaded black gaze.

Number 1743 chose that moment to stand in her crib, her pudgy fingers clutching the bars of the cage as she bawled. The snake's head turned away from Hinata, as it became interested in the baby.

The world slowed.

In front of Hinata, the snake lashed out once more, its maw open wide, fangs glistening—towards the baby's face, peering over the crib bars.

It was still fast. But Hinata was faster. 

To his eyes, it seemed to barely be moving at all. He lunged, feet kicking off the ground. He reached, fingertips desperately outstretched, as the snake struck—but it was halted, abruptly, by his hand closing around its body, right below its head.

Hinata wrapped both hands underneath its head and twisted, snapping its vertebrae and severing the spine in one movement. The snake went instantly limp—not dead, but dying, and no longer a threat. He dropped it to the floor. It hadn't put so much as a scratch on the baby, or on him.

The sound of shrill crying reached his ears again, as the world resumed pace. The baby reached its arms out to him, wailing, terrified. He hesitated, and then backed away from the crib, all the way to the wall where he slumped to the floor. His entire body was shaking uncontrollably. What had he just done? How had he done it?

And more importantly—why couldn't he have done it sooner? He looked at the caregiver's body where it lay, motionless. There was blood everywhere.

The door to the room opened, and personnel flooded inside. They swarmed the place, inspecting the gruesome scene, checking on the baby. Eventually, someone came over to Hinata, asked him for his account of the incident. He told them. They brushed aside his questions about the noise he had heard, the feedback. They said something had gone wrong with the intercom in the room.

He was more suited to fighting than caregiving, they told him. The Overseer would be pleased; they needed fighters, to protect the Vault from dangers like this one. Dangers from the outside.

Hinata stared at them silently, and didn't voice his thoughts. The caregiver had known something was going to happen. Just like Yachi had known things she wasn't meant to know.

The danger hadn't come from the outside.

*

For over five years, Hinata spent nearly all his time immersed in his training. The time for tests and lessons disguised as exercise and recreation was at an end. Now they taught him the basics of defense across a wide variety of disciplines. Firearms weren't his specialty, but he excelled at close-quarters and hand-to-hand combat, despite his size. He sometimes wished they would train him faster, but he knew by now that they would go at their own pace, whether he liked it or not.

He was somewhat satisfied with the fact that he always had dreams about the things he learned. He dreamed about doing more—always getting better. Though much of the incident had faded from his mind, in his dreams, he was like he had been when he had killed the snake. Faster and deadlier than the serpent.

In his dreams, he could win fights with his eyes closed; could catch arrows out of the air; could calculate the trajectories of bullets before they were fired and dodge them. All the things he wanted to do were possible in his head. Except one.

He wanted to leave the Vault. But that, he never dreamed of.

It was only now that he was older—in his twenties, partway through the over-20 barracks—that'd he'd come to realize how few people were happy inside the Vault. But it wasn't safe to talk about it, because the fear was stronger. Fear of the Overseer and his forces, of being labeled impure and cast out into the horrors of the Wasteland, made it impossible to tell friend from foe. The only person Hinata knew he could trust was Yachi; but he was too afraid to get her in trouble to talk to her about anything. It was too dangerous to even reassure her, because he knew someone was always watching, always listening. He couldn't give away that he knew anything was wrong. But having a friend seemed to be enough to keep Yachi going, and he could be that easily enough.

Right up until the moment he realized friendship wouldn't be enough to save her.

Yachi had been under more and more pressure lately, he knew. Shouyou saw her rarely, and when he did, she never seemed like herself. She had always been a bit nervous, but now it was more like she was outright afraid, waiting for the axe to fall. She was constantly near tears, and he stopped trying to make her laugh and instead just focused on trying to make sure she didn't cry. But she was going to crack soon, even he could see that. She must know it herself. And the Vault didn't have resources to waste on broken things.

He didn't even see it coming when it happened, which would be hard to forgive himself for. He was on his way to training when they passed in the hall, both of them escorted as usual. That part wasn't strange.

What was strange was the way Yachi reached out as they passed, as Hinata started to say hello, barely brushing his hand with her fingers.

Hinata stumbled, caught off guard at the feeling, the way it jarred him, like something was shaking loose inside him. He was suddenly aware of a noise in his head, one he'd heard before—the high-pitched whine, the feedback. He stopped in his tracks and stared at Yachi, voice lost. Normally he would have said something, but it felt as though he were resetting, things clicking back into place. He could only watch as one of the men with her yanked her back, breaking their line of sight with each other.

The incident wouldn't leave his head as he arrived at the training room and began to prepare.

It was easy to fade into his practice that day, let the muscle memory take over and strip his nerves, his worries, his thoughts…

Usually, he snapped out of these trances in his room or the training area after he was done or even the showers. But that day, it was screaming that broke him back into reality.

Hinata shook his head as the world got louder and sharper.

"Please, don't— _please,_ I was just doing what you wanted—you told me to learn, so I _learned—"_

That voice, terrified and frantic, was familiar. Hinata blinked. He was in a room he'd never been in before—it was completely sparse, the lighting harsh. There was an observation window, but it was one-way. He couldn't see beyond it. A voice spoke, but it wasn't anyone in the room. It came from a speaker set into the wall by the window.

_"You looked where you shouldn't have. You are a danger to the Vault."_

Hinata looked around himself, down, to see he was holding a weapon—a gun. He looked up.

In front of him, two of the trainers were holding a woman by the arms. She had a dark sack over her head. As he watched, still unable to comprehend anything, they forced her to her knees roughly. The bag was yanked off her head.

It was Yachi.

Tears streamed down her face as she stared up at Hinata. He wanted to ask her what was happening, but the words wouldn't come. It wasn't the same as when he'd been afraid before, too scared from past lessons to speak up. It was like when he saw himself in his dreams. He was an observer in his own body.

_"You have been found guilty of your crimes, and sentenced to exile in the Wasteland."_

"Death," Yachi whispered. "You mean sentenced to death."

_"1637, Hinata. You will carry out the sentence."_

Hinata's arms raised. He couldn't stop them. Now, he was starting to understand—and horror rose inside him, like bile in his throat, as he realized what was happening, and that it was happening against his will.

 _Stop,_ he thought desperately, _NO._

"Hinata, don't, don't—it's me—" Yachi sobbed. "I'm sorry—"

"Hi—" Hinata said, even as he aimed the gun at her head, finger positioning on the trigger. "Hito—ka—"

Yachi's terrified eyes snapped open wide. "Help me," she said. "Shouyou."

Shouyou fired.

The trainer on Hitoka's right side shouted in pain as the bullet hit him in the shoulder. Shouyou fired again, shooting the other trainer through the kneecap. He dropped to the ground, and Shouyou lunged forward, too fast for them to react, and smashed the gun into the first man's face, knocking him unconscious. He turned to Hitoka.

"Come on," he said, pulling on her arms to get her to stand. At the reminder of his other name, it was as though all the loosening chains on him had finally been shaken off. "Come on, Hitoka, we have to go!"

She gaped at him. "Wh-where?"

"Out," Shouyou said firmly. "We're getting out of the Vault."

For a split second, she looked even more frightened than before. Then she nodded. "Follow me."

The corridor they emerged into was completely unfamiliar to Shouyou, just like the room. But Hitoka seemed to know exactly where she was going—taking turns left and right like she'd been there many times, until they reached an unmarked door at the end of one long hallway. Hitoka hovered in front of the keypad for a moment, before tapping out a sequence on the keys. The door swung open.

Inside it was a room filled with screens, and turbines, and a wall of flickering lights and buttons and knobs. On a desk in the center was a computer terminal. Shouyou stared at it, awed. The lights seemed to pull him in, resonating with some other sense within him, not sight, but sound, thrumming and pulsing.

"What is all this?" Shouyou asked.

"It's why he doesn't like touching—disrupts the signal," Hitoka said. "It's how he controls us. How he does everything."

"Who?"

"The Overseer," Hitoka said. She bent over the keyboard at the computer, typing away furiously. "First, keep them out," she muttered. The door to the room beeped loudly, followed by a series of loud clicks. Hitoka smiled thinly. "Now, I get in…"

"I don't understand—" Shouyou said. Everything was happening too fast. "What do you mean by control—"

"You're not always _you,"_ Hitoka said, eyes unblinking as she stared at the screen. Her fingers flew over the keys. "I know you've sensed it. When you're _Shouyou,_ that's really you—your true name makes the other one shut down. The one that—" She swallowed hard, falling silent.

"I almost killed you," Shouyou said, still in shock.

Hitoka shook her head. "Not your fault. It's what they trained him to do."

It was so strange, to feel so disconnected. Shouyou felt as though he'd been split in two. He stared at the gun in his hands.

"Hitoka," he said softly, "have I done it before? Have I killed other people?"

Hitoka stopped typing. Slowly, she turned to look at him. "You didn't have a choice."

Shouyou's vision blurred swiftly, as his eyes filled with tears. "It wasn't really me," he whispered, as a wave of nausea threatened to choke him. But what did that mean? It had been his hands, he had moved them, he had aimed at her, too. So he had pulled the trigger, who knew how many times before.

"Thank you," Hitoka said, suddenly, and he took a shaky breath.

"For what?"

"For recognizing me," she told him. "For saving me."

Shouyou tightened his grip on his gun, processing her gratitude. If he had pulled the trigger in the past, then he'd also chosen not to, this time. And if he could manage that, then he could choose to never let it happen again.

A deep, resonating bang sounded at the door, startling them both. They'd been found. Shouyou could hear the sounds of many people moving outside, mobilizing. They would open the doors soon enough, by force. He had learned about explosives in his training. A large enough charge would be enough to blow it.

"No!" Hitoka muttered. She slammed her hands on the desk, leaning forward, her nose inches from the computer screen. "I thought I'd learned enough to get in, I thought—"

Shouyou put a hand on her shoulder. "You did learn enough," he said reassuringly. "You figured all of this out, and you got us here. I think it's okay if you don't have the answers this time."

"What do we do?" she asked.

Shouyou glared at the computer. He lifted his gun. "We shut it down for good."

"I don't—" Hitoka shook her head, her shoulders jumping with fright every time another bang sounded at the door. "I don't know what will _happen_ if we do that."

"We know what will happen if we don't," Shouyou said grimly. Hitoka took a deep breath and nodded, because that fact couldn't be argued. They were dead, if they couldn't stop it. Them, and everyone else in the Vault, in a sense.

What they were doing now had never really been living.

Shouyou tightened his grip on his gun.

"Wait," Hitoka said, trying something else on the keyboard. This time, she looked triumphant, as the system beeped. And then the sound of a latch releasing clicked in Shouyou's ears, and a safe in the wall near the desk slid open. Inside it sat a gauntlet of some kind, big and bulky with a screen on the wrist. Hitoka grabbed it, cradling it protectively against her chest as she scurried behind Shouyou.

Shouyou took aim, and fired. As sturdy as it looked, the computer was no match for bullets. The screen shattered and went black, sparks flinging off of it. He meant to turn the weapon on the switchboard next, but there was no need. As soon as the computer had been destroyed, everything else followed. There was a low, gaping, gnawing sound, as the lights flickered and then dimmed, shutting off altogether. At the same time, the thudding on the door stopped.

Shouyou dropped his gun. His hands, his arms, were shaking violently, trembling so hard they felt like they didn't belong to him. Behind him, Hitoka made a choking sound, and then collapsed. He turned halfway, to try and help, but couldn't even manage that. He fell next, slamming bonelessly to the cold floor where he lay, spasming uncontrollably.

Like the dimming lights, it felt as though his body was following suit. He was fading; his consciousness, his thoughts, his memory. It was terrifying; but the scariest part wasn't what he was losing—what was frightening were the memories that stayed. His new knowledge, the new reality he'd just discovered, was being buried. He was being left only with the years of fear induction, but none of his new understanding. It meant he was still, in many ways, being controlled.

"No…" he whispered, and then all was blackness.

*

Shouyou woke in the Vault to the sounds of running, screaming—and something else. Unfamiliar. Sharp and rhythmic and loud. His head was pounding.

"Shouyou! _Shouyou!"_

He looked dazedly to see there was a woman next to him, shaking his shoulder. She was familiar to him, yet at the same time, he couldn't place her. She was about his age, and he just stared at her.

"Are you alright?!" she asked, hysterical. He nodded, even though he didn't feel alright. "I don't know what happened—but shutting it down—did something! It messed everything up!"

"Shutting what down?" Shouyou asked. Why was there so much screaming? The Vault was normally nearly silent. "Who are you?"

The woman blinked at him, shaken out of her panic momentarily. For a split second, she looked very sad. Then she shook her head. "Nevermind that. We have to get you out of here. He's got to be looking for you."

"Who?"

"The Overseer," she said. "Come on."

She held something out to him, and he looked at it, baffled. It was a gun; she held it carefully, the barrel pointed carefully away from them both. He looked up at her, unsure of what to do with it. He didn't know how to use one.

"Results vary for each individual…" she murmured. "I know you haven't forgotten how to run. Let's go."

She grabbed his hand and he tried to jerk away, shocked that anyone would attempt it, but she didn't let go. He noticed now that she wore a strange device on her arm—heavy-looking, with a large screen on it.

They ran, out of the room and through the long corridor. There were bodies they had to step over, and splashed on the walls…

"Is that—blood?" Shouyou asked, feeling nauseated.

"They turned on each other," the woman told him. "I didn't—I didn't expect that. It's like some could override the signal, but not everyone. We need to get out of here."

"And go where?"

"Outside," she said.  

Shouyou's heart stuttered within his chest. But somehow, he knew—they had to leave the Vault.

Past the hidden area of maze-like corridors they emerged into a more familiar common area at a cross section of several of the barracks—but it had been disfigured, marred by ongoing violence. People ran, and fought, and many had died. The walls and floor were covered in red. The hem of Shouyou's tunic dragged through it.

A man tried to stop them as they sprinted past, grabbing Shouyou violently, flinging him against one of the walls, slicking his clothes with more blood. But before he could do anything, a hole appeared right in the side of his head, messy and awful. Someone had shot him, and Shouyou wondered if he would be next, but the bullet never came. The dead man slumped forward onto Shouyou where he stood, frozen. It left a messy streak of red down the front of his white shift.

Shouyou could feel the tears rising to his eyes, his throat struggling as he tried to suppress a scream. He was covered in the blood of others.

"Don't stop," the woman told him, pulling him along again. She looked near tears, too. "Almost there—"

There turned out to be another nondescript door that she knew the code for—in the chaos, no one seemed to see them slip through it. Past it, things were mercifully quiet. There was no one in this long, dark hallway, and they kept moving down it, until finally, they reached it.

The exit to the Vault. The door to the outside.

It was enormous—towering above them, circular in shape, with a painted yellow 84 in the center. The woman plugged something from her wrist device into a panel set before it.

"Once you get out, be careful," she said, sounding distracted as she worked with the device. "It's not as bad as they said, but it is still dangerous. But you'll be okay. I know you will."

"Wait—I can't leave… if you're not coming," Shouyou said to the woman. "I want to help—"

"You can't," she told him. "They'll kill you as you are. All you can do is _run._ Run, and never come back. Forget all of it."

"What about you?!" he asked desperately. "I don't even—"

 _"Forget_ me, Hinata," she said, and something caught and twinged unpleasantly in Shouyou's head.  The klaxons in the room began to sound, lights flashing. The door was beginning to open. "I'll be okay," the woman said, her smile wavering. "I know the answers, now."

"But—"

"Go!" she shouted, and he obeyed, as he'd been taught to do—turned and stumbled through the open Vault door.

Beyond it was a dank, musty space with uneven, stony walls. He searched his memory and recalled the word: a cave. It was so dim he could barely see. The ground felt strange below his feet; soft, uneven. He had never stood on something like it, and for a moment, he was afraid. Afraid to move forward. This was a world he could barely even fathom; one he had only ever been allowed to glimpse before.

And then he remembered, one particular image—one hazy, staticky vision.

He pushed on forward. And the darkness of the cave, miraculously, began to lighten with every step he took.

The walk was long, but then he saw it—a light so bright it seemed unreal. He sped up, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste to reach it, until he was sprinting flat out, and then he burst from the mouth of the cave, falling to his knees into a hot, powdery, brown substance. Sand? He blinked, raising his head, and saw it above him.

Sky. Endless, and blue. Real blue, not the approximation of his television set. It was vast, and frighteningly beautiful.

He stood once more, and didn't look back before he started to walk forward. There were so many things he didn't know: why he'd had to run. Why the Overseer wanted to kill him. What he'd done to cause the deaths of so many. He felt deep down, without understanding why, that he was to blame.

But one thing he did know for certain.

He would leave the Vault behind, and he would never go back. Because finally, he had entered the Wasteland.


	2. Chapter 2

Kageyama woke with a violent start, his heart slamming against his ribcage. Sitting up did him no favors; he shut his eyes against the throbbing pain in his head. Feeling alongside his hairline revealed the presence of dried blood and a prominent lump. His eyes flew open as he remembered.

"Shouyou?!" he called. "Shouyou!"

But Shouyou was nowhere in sight.

A quick glance around the room unfortunately confirmed that he was the only one there. His gun was gone, and worse, the Vault door they had entered through was closed again, which meant its locking mechanism had likely been triggered. Shouyou had disappeared, and Kageyama couldn't follow.

"Fuck!"

This was his fault.

Kageyama put his head in his hands, fingers gripping hard in his hair. He had no idea what had happened; but he knew whatever it was, Shouyou hadn't expected it any more than he had. Kageyama knew it hadn't been a betrayal—that was always reflected in the eyes, whether or not it was personal.

But in the seconds before Shouyou had attacked him, there had been only blankness in his face. Still familiar—Kageyama had seen that expression on him, once or twice, and hadn't known what it meant. He still wasn't sure, but one thing was for certain. Bringing Shouyou back to the Vault had allowed it to surface.

Shouyou hadn't betrayed him, no, it had been the other way around. For all his talk, Kageyama hadn't been able to shield him from the Vault after all. And Shouyou would be the one to suffer.

Kageyama dragged himself to his feet, ignoring his headache. He'd need a Personal Information Processor to open the door, and as those weren't exactly common, his only choice now was to investigate deeper inside the Vault, and hopefully find a Pip-boy there.

He'd been inside a Vault before—two, to be exact. He'd come across them while traveling. One had been taken over as a settlement of sorts, many years after it had first been opened; the other had been abandoned, fallen to ruin and raided many times over by the time he'd come across it.

The Vault door was isolated in its own chamber, but continuing off the walkway that led to it, down a long dark hallway, brought him to a nondescript door that had been left slightly ajar. He wished he still had his gun. As it was, Shouyou had only left the flashlight he'd used to knock Kageyama unconscious—now Kageyama wielded it like a club, gripped tight in one hand as he reached out cautiously and pushed the door open.

The room beyond was empty, too. But this made no sense. Vaults were like legends to the people of the Wasteland. If Shouyou had escaped, surely others must have gotten out. From there, word would have spread one way or another; and the Vault had just been left open when they found it. For there to be no looting, no bandit vultures, even, seemed impossible.

The door led to what appeared to be yet another hallway, long and curved, with corridors evenly spaced along it, leading further in. The door out was unmarked, unimportant. Strange, considering the Vault exit was just on the other side. Unless… it had been meant to appear unimportant, to keep people from getting too curious. He shined the flashlight over the walls, and saw there was writing above the corridor openings.

"Recreation… dining…" he read. "Barracks…" That last was strange. Was it military barracks? There were different clusters for these, in groupings: over-5, over-10, over-15, and so on. They stopped at over-45. And then, above the last corridor: "Nursery."

He remembered, with a sense of creeping curiosity, what Shouyou had said about them not being allowed to reproduce naturally; so he turned and walked down the corridor, wondering what he would find.

Unlike the other two Vaults he had found before, this one felt neither abandoned nor inhabited. The emergency lighting barely served to illuminate it, but Kageyama could see that it was still orderly, although there were no signs of life anywhere in the place. It was eerily still, and yet, though he was certain he was alone, he couldn't help but feel he was being watched.

The mechanics on the door to the nursery had failed, but when he pushed his weight against it, he was able to force it to the side enough that he could slip in. Inside was much the same. Dark, gloomy—the walls of metal on all sides didn't help. He hadn't thought there might be a place bleaker than the Wasteland, but at least outside there was fresh air and running water and open sky.

But the Vault was little more than a cell. The nursery area was more like a prison, filled with rows of tiny rooms with large windows looking in, that Kageyama at first could not conceive of a purpose for. Then he started to pay attention to what was in them. There was a box of old crayons strewn about the floor in one. Colored drawings. A crib.

The door to one room was ajar off the hinges, and after forcing it open wide enough with a heavy kick, he managed to get inside it. It was empty, save for a tiny bed in the corner, and a meager stack of picture books. Slowly, he turned to the window.

It was opaque. He couldn't see out the other side.

His stomach lurched unpleasantly. These rooms had held children, young ones. But they were claustrophobically small, and worse, though the children had clearly been watched, they could only see the four walls pressing in on them.

He continued on through the empty carcass of what used to be a nursery, until he had reached a personnel door, the only one so far that hadn't been stuck open with the power malfunction. It must run on the backup generator. Why had such precautions been taken to make sure it remained closed?

_"Do you want to see inside?"_

Kageyama whirled around. The voice had been unfamiliar, but it had definitely been in the room with him, and he shined the flashlight in all directions, lighting up dark corners, the empty insides of rooms. He could see no movement.

 _"You're looking for someone,"_ the voice continued. It was wispy and guttural, simultaneously, and then a shrill screech made Kageyama wince and he realized that though it was coming from inside the nursery, whoever it was wasn't speaking in person.

He aimed the flashlight beam near the ceiling instead and saw it—a black speaker set into the wall.

"Who the hell are you?" Kageyama asked. "Are you him? The Overseer?" He gripped his flashlight as threateningly as he could manage.

_"I see a lot. I see you want answers."_

"You're damn right I want answers," Kageyama snarled. "Where is Shouyou?"

There was silence for a long moment. Then:

_"You know that name?"_

"What other name would I know?"

As though he'd spoken some kind of password, there was a soft _click._ The door to the office opened slowly. Darkness lay beyond.

_"Find out."_

Kageyama glared at the path laid out before him. He didn't trust the voice at all. But he liked the thought of turning back, of not learning what had happened to Shouyou, even less. He entered.

Here, too, all was dark—but there were scattered pillars of light within the room, and as Kageyama approached closer he realized they were circular tanks, filled with water and lit an odd greenish color. This was due to the murkiness of the water, he soon realized, but the tanks themselves were empty. The beam of the flashlight revealed scribbled placards posted on each of the tanks. They were faded and brown, but some of the writing could still be made out.

Written on each was a numbered designation, a time marked out in what looked like weeks, and some kind of attribute—this was the most confusing part to Kageyama. They varied between a few standard categories: strength, perception, endurance, agility… and then below all those, the same thing. _Sex,_ followed by the letter M or F.

He remembered what Shouyou had told him, about the Vault. _"…they'd just get whatever they needed from the parents and then they'd make the baby…"_

Unnerved, he kept moving, reading more, until he arrived at one of the last tanks.

 _Subject #1802_  
_Trimester 2: 17 w_  
_Focus: Intelligence_  
_Sex: M_  
_Notes: Monitor with regularity. Left temporal cortex not displaying ideal development. May necessitate termination; too early to determine._

The word _termination_ made Kageyama feel sick. He recalled Shouyou's underlying terror, how afraid he always seemed of doing the wrong thing. He could only imagine what had happened to people who couldn't display "ideal development" as they got older.

This still, he thought, didn't give him much insight as to Shouyou himself, and what had happened when they'd first entered the Vault, but then he spotted it; an old computer, tucked away at a workstation in the corner of the room.

He doubted it would still work, but when he walked around the desk he saw it was already powered on. He wasn't very good with computers, but he managed to navigate through the menus, trying to find something, anything, that might give him an idea of what had happened to Shouyou.

The nursery with its one way windows made more sense as he read about the "subjects". All the aspects of their childhood were tightly monitored and controlled, activities and games and images tailored with a focus on testing the attributes marked on the tanks. He clicked through page after page detailing their upbringing—the emphasis on isolation, the subconscious training that started from infancy.

The banning of touch clicked into place again as he found sections in the records regarding radio frequencies. He read it over and over, trying to make sense of the scientific jargon. He almost wished he'd brought Tsukishima. By matching the frequency to the brainwave function of the Vault residents from an early age, they were able to achieve a sort of constant mind control, that could be triggered by tones and broadcast signals. Kageyama recalled even Shouyou had had some underlying idea of this—subliminal messages. The method wasn't foolproof.

"Control over the subjects can be broken by disrupting the frequency…" he read off the screen.

It made him recall other moments; Shouyou never having listened to the radio because it had been forbidden, his conflicted approach to physical intimacy, the strange breakdowns as they neared the Vault.

"Human touch is another method of grounding…" Especially effective in younger children before they had been fully conditioned. Vault staff had discouraged it, and it was outright punishable in many cases.

He'd always heard things about the Vaults, of course. They were Wasteland myths, and stories got told. Some people seemed convinced that the protection they offered wasn't worth it. That there were worse monsters locked inside them than the Wasteland had to offer. Kageyama had seen the Wasteland, and scoffed at the idea.

He'd been wrong.

He read on. At the age of five, the children were named. They were given two. One was called a "control". The other: the "killswitch".

_Revealing a subject's killswitch to anyone other than authorized personnel will result in exile to the Wasteland._

Had Shouyou been exiled? That didn't explain the blood, the missing memories…

Then he realized he didn't need to guess.

It looked like the files were sorted by age grouping—the same way living quarters were divided, Kageyama soon saw. This made sense, considering no one in the Vault knew who their blood relatives were. Shouyou was a little older than he was, barely. He started combing through the files for the 20-25 grouping, over-20, looking for the right name, until finally…

 _Subject #1637_  
_Control: Hinata  
Killswitch: Shouyou_

"Found you," Kageyama breathed, his chest tight. He almost didn't want to look further. But he had to. He owed it to Shouyou, after he'd forced him to come back to this place.

Shouyou's focus was split, it seemed, between agility and endurance. The early tests he'd undergone as a child were geared towards both. There was black and white video, of the smallest little boy imaginable, crawling around his room, coloring at the small desk. Sometimes he would sit in front of the small TV on the floor—Kageyama thought at first it was only in small increments, until he noticed a slight change from one moment to the next in Shouyou's position. He rewound the video, and noted the time stamp.

It cut there, and sped up in other sections. Shouyou had spent hours upon hours in the same spot, some days, unmoving, as he watched the TV.

There were more videos, more notes, more reports. His physical training had started in earnest once he'd moved into the barracks, but he hadn't been aware of all of it. From the look of things, most people weren't, in order for the Overseer to maintain control. His body and reflexes were trained and honed without his knowing; the little boy stayed unaware of the machine they were turning him into.

At twelve, Shouyou was punished for the first time. The transgression was listed only as "interaction breach; level 3". The time lapse video of his isolation spanned three weeks. Kageyama forced himself to watch all of it—the sobbing and hysterics that he could only see, not hear; the ravenous eating when they brought Shouyou sporadic meals; the fractured stillness that finally descended, Shouyou curled up in a corner, unmoving. And then the eerie last days, after the TV slid from behind a panel in the wall. Shouyou standing rigidly in front of it, staring.

The report on the video was as incomprehensible as it was infuriating.

_Aptitude test a success! 1637 is able to function beyond baseline levels even under conditions of high stress and low sustenance. Uses currently outweigh risk of contamination. Requesting suspension of termination to further assess benefits._

The request had been granted, but came at a price. The reports called it a "graduation", his passage into the over-15 barracks. If he passed, it would be one more mark on his scorecard. If he failed, he died.

He passed. Kageyama rewatched the video twice, unable to believe what he was seeing. No normal person should have been able to move like Shouyou had, but no matter how many times he rewound, slowed, or paused it, the video didn't change. Shouyou could catch a snake mid-strike with his bare hands. As long as he had the proper incentive. He'd had people to protect.

Spared from termination, they threw Shouyou headlong back into training. Impossibly, he continued to improve at an even more alarming rate. And so did their control over him.

Shouyou's late teen years were devoid of incident, but Kageyama couldn't shake the dread he felt creeping up. More than training his reflexes, they focused even more on his mind; testing the boundaries of what he would do, what they could make him do. And then came an early report from Shouyou's first year in the over-20 barracks.

_Subject 1637 - execution order 001 - status: successful._

The video was short, abrupt, and brutal. The room it showed was sparse, empty. There were four people inside it: two armed guards, a man with a dark bag over his head, and Shouyou. He had also been armed, a rifle held easily in his grip. There hadn't been a strong emphasis on his firearm training in any of the other videos; in fact, Shouyou as Kageyama knew him had barely known how to hold a gun when they'd first met, let alone use one.

The guards pulled the bag from the man's head. He struggled, but Shouyou looked straight past him, like he didn't even see him. Kageyama realized he wasn't—it was the same in his training. The same as the moment he'd attacked Kageyama. Whatever conditioning they'd subjected Shouyou to, they could apparently trigger it at will, forcing him into a trance where he could access his true potential, but at the cost of being fully under their control.

With a sick feeling, Kageyama watched, as Shouyou responded to something—a command, presumably. He raised the gun and aimed it at the restrained man. Without hesitation, he fired; a single clean shot, straight between the eyes. Shouyou showed no reaction.

Kageyama knew this tactic. Raider groups used it to force loyalty upon members in their ranks. Even if Shouyou didn't know it was happening, the impact was the same. If they could make him kill for them, they could make him do anything.

But the Shouyou that Kageyama had come to know had had trouble killing the animals they hunted in the early days. Even when he knew their jobs were dangerous, when they'd had to face gangs and Raiders and mutants, he hadn't wanted to kill anyone. What had happened in between?

The videos of the executions weren't numerous. There were only three more. Unlike the others, Kageyama chose not to watch them—he knew Shouyou wouldn't have wanted him to see.

But after the fourth video, he noticed something strange. The reports stopped there. There were no more additional notes.

Apprehensively, he decided to play the final video.

It started off just like all the others had. Two guards flanked the unlucky person who had been sentenced, forcing them to the ground in front of Shouyou, who stared straight ahead of himself, blank and unseeing. A voice listed off the accused's "crimes".

Kageyama leaned in closer. In the first video, Shouyou had seemed to be under the same kind of trance they put him under in his training. But now, although the video was fuzzy, it seemed like he was actually seeing something. He turned to look at the prisoner even before they pulled the bag off her head.

It was a woman, about the same age as Shouyou and Kageyama. She seemed to be saying something, crying. Shouyou stared at her, and Kageyama stared at him, as he raised the gun and pointed it at her.

 _"Fight it,"_ Kageyama urged the Shouyou in the video, hoped.

And Shouyou fought.

It wasn't clear what had changed, this time. But instead of shooting the prisoner, Shouyou saved her. He recognized her, something had shaken him out of their control, and as Kageyama watched, a strange sense of triumph swelling in his chest, Shouyou took out both guards and then escaped, the girl in tow.

Shouyou hadn't been exiled—he'd escaped. Both from the Vault, and whatever influence it had exerted over him for his entire life. And if he could do it once, then there must be a way to break him free again.

"What did it?" Kageyama muttered to himself. He rewound the video, rewatching… there. He was almost sure Shouyou had blinked, right before his trance had broken. "What did you see?" He watched again, looking around the room in the video clip, but it was completely empty. He watched the guards, he watched the girl— "Or is it what you _heard…"_

Before Shouyou completely broke the trance, and before he blinked, the girl had looked right at him, and her lips had moved.

"You know Shouyou."

Kageyama spun towards the door, flashlight raised, as much as to illuminate the person standing there as to defend himself. But when he saw who it was, he lowered it slowly.

The woman from the video stood framed in the doorway.

"I thought I knew him," Kageyama replied carefully.

But she shook her head. "You _know_ him. You don't know Hinata."

A piece of the puzzle slotted into place.

"That's what you said to him," Kageyama said. "You said his name."

"The killswitch," she corrected. "It shuts down the control. We were as good as dead if we couldn't be controlled."

"What's yours?" Kageyama asked.

She smiled nervously, mouth wobbling. "Hitoka."

"Hitoka," Kageyama said, as gently as he knew how. He felt like he was trying to approach an injured doe. "My name is Kageyama. Can you help me find him?"

Hitoka met his eyes squarely. "I want to try."

A fuzzy buzzing noise made them both startle, and then Hitoka grabbed at a small radio by her waist, a device that looked something like the old, dilapidated telephones Kageyama was used to seeing, sometimes, when scavenging abandoned buildings.

_"—toka. Hitoka, are you there? We need to go."_

"I—I am!" Hitoka said quickly. "I was just—"

 _"We're out of time,"_ the voice over the radio said. _"They're here."_

Hitoka clutched the radio so tightly her fingers turned white. "We're coming."

"Who's here?" Kageyama asked.

"Messengers," Hitoka said, "from the Overseer. Sorry, Kageyama, I'll explain if we escape."

Kageyama swore, hurrying along behind her as she led him back through the nursery, all the way out to the Vault door. It was hard to believe that after all that time, so much of it spent wondering, he was already done with the place. Then he realized something.

"How did you get in?" he asked.

Something—someone—appeared in the open doorway, and Kageyama snapped his attention to it, already moving to put himself between this new arrival and Hitoka. But Hitoka, for all her skittishness, darted right around him, hurrying to the newcomer.

It was a woman. Average height, with hair as dark as his own, and silver spectacles that looked delicately out of place for their environment.

"I didn't think they'd find us this fast," Hitoka was saying, "I thought—"

"It's okay," the other woman told her. Her eyes were impassive as they locked onto Kageyama. "Is he clear?"

"He knows Shouyou," Hitoka said. "This is Kageyama."

Kageyama prepared himself to prove her words were the truth, but the woman, to his surprise, nodded.

"Shimizu," the woman introduced herself. "You know how to shoot, too?"  

Dumbly, Kageyama nodded. Without preamble, the woman held out a pistol for him to take, before unslinging the rifle on her back and checking to make sure it was loaded. She didn't even cast him a second glance.

"How can you trust me that easily?" Kageyama blurted out.

It made no sense to him. Even if he was telling the truth about knowing Shouyou, that didn't mean much. He could still have been hostile, or even working with the mysterious Overseer who frightened them so much. And Hitoka was from the Vault, but Shimizu clearly wasn't. One of the first lessons taught by the Wasteland was how risky it was to trust anyone.

But Shimizu shook her head. "I don't trust you. But she does." She jerked her head in Hitoka's direction.

Hitoka smiled encouragingly at him. Kageyama wasn't sure it made him feel any better, but he also knew he had no choice but to go along with them, for now.

"Just buy me some time," Hitoka said.

"It might not be much," Shimizu warned her. "I couldn't get a good read on them, so we'll need to be careful."

Wondering what they would need to buy time for, Kageyama followed them both, out the Vault door. When it began to close behind them, automatically, he stared at it in shock. It was only then that he noticed that Shimizu wore the Pip-boy on her wrist. That must have been how Hitoka had gotten inside the Vault, but the door had been open when he and Shouyou had found it.

He sighed in frustration. It had been a trap from the start, and he'd walked right into it.

"There's no way you could have known…"

Kageyama looked sharply at Hitoka, who was watching him. She squeaked in surprise, before turning her gaze forward again. But again, she spoke softly. "You don't know how the Vaults work. It's not your fault."

She must be very good at reading people, but still. "You're wrong," Kageyama grunted. "It's completely my fault."

Before she could respond, Shimizu shushed them both. They had reached the mouth of the cave.

"You and I will go out first," Shimizu whispered to Kageyama. "Once the coast is clear, Hitoka, you follow. Cover is pretty sparse out here, so wait for my signal."

Kageyama kept his pistol up and ready as he stepped from the darkness of the cave back out into the bright sun. For a moment, he was blinded, and had to turn sharply away, so he was looking back, in the direction of the cliff face the cave was set into.

Luck saved him.

He didn't even have the chance to issue a warning outloud. His reflexes kicked in, and he shoved Shimizu aside, throwing himself in the opposite direction to avoid the man plummeting from the sky.

He landed in the vacated space between them with a slam Kageyama felt judder up his legs. As he stood, slowly, Kageyama realized he must have jumped from higher up on the cliff. He straightened to his full height—he was even taller and broader than Kageyama was. He wore a helmet that obscured most of his face.

There was no way a normal person should have been able to jump from that height and land with no ill effects.

As Kageyama was still trying to wrap his head around it, Shimizu fired her weapon—the bullet dug into the man's shoulder. He jolted at the impact, turning to face her. He showed no sign of having been injured, at all.

"Shit—" Kageyama muttered, raising his own gun. He'd just have to aim for the helmet and hope it couldn't stand multiple shots.

"You should watch where you point that," a vicious, playful voice sang. Right in his ear.

Kageyama's shot went wild; he tried to turn, knowing he'd already been caught.

The fist that slammed into his face rocked him, and then his legs were swept out from under him before he could gain his balance. He went down hard on his back in the sand. He hadn't even seen it coming.

Blearily, he blinked up at the sky. He heard a volley of gunshots go off—they rang in his ears. Shimizu, still alive. A boot hit the ground near Kageyama's head, then another, and then someone shifted into view, bending low. They tilted their head, surveying him curiously. Silhouetted against the sun, Kageyama couldn't make out their facial features—only that they were very tall, and thin, a skeletal figure.

"You aren't going to fight back?" they asked him.

Kageyama rolled to his feet, pointing his gun at this new enemy's forehead.

But there was no one there.

Breathing hard, Kageyama spun one way, then the other. Someone had been there, but now he stood alone, waving his gun at thin air.

"Kageyama!"

He looked around, to see Shimuzu's luck with her giant had run out. She must have been trying to keep him from entering the cave, where Hitoka still hid, because he had caught her in the entrance. With alarming ease, he yanked the gun from her hands, and then wrapped a hand around her throat, lifting her into the air like she weighed nothing. Shimizu stretched out her hand, painfully, towards Kageyama.

Still reeling, Kageyama started to move to help her, but stopped again as he realized—she wasn't reaching for him. She was pointing at him. And then, the second realization. Not _at_ him.

The sun, in its position in the sky, cast long shadows. And now he noticed what he'd mistaken for his own dark reflection in the sand didn't start at his feet.

He was standing in someone else's shadow. And they were right behind him.

A knee crunched into his spine before he could even make a move; the breath was slammed from his lungs and he went down hard, a second time.

He wasn't fast enough, again. It made him furious, though logically he knew, after what he'd just seen and discovered, that he couldn't hope to be a match for the former Vault dwellers.

The gun was knocked from his hand all too easily in his battered state. His arm was wrenched behind his back and then pressure forced onto him, crushing him down into the sand. He could feel his arm being bent beyond its limits, they were aiming to break it, slowly—his vision was obscured by sand, grit scratching at his eyes, but he could make out Shimizu, as she went limp, still held aloft in the other man's grasp.

"NO MORE," a thin voice screamed, and the man, inexplicably, released Shimizu, right before he himself crumpled to the ground.

"What the hell…" Kageyama heard his attacker mutter, though all the mockery had gone out of his voice. He fought to raise his head to see what was happening.

Hitoka emerged from the shadows of the cave, brandishing her radio out in front of her like a weapon. Her arms were trembling violently, but she kept advancing on the fallen man. She cast a frightened glance at Shimizu, who was coughing hoarsely as she struggled to get to her hands and knees.

"I'm okay," she rasped, "Hitoka—help him—"

Instantly, Hitoka turned to face Kageyama. Her expression was contorted. "I can't find his frequency—"

She fell silent, and at the same time, the weight on Kageyama's back eased. He couldn't help the flood of relief that washed over him as they released his arm and the pain subsided. He still didn't understand what was going on.

"I'm not on one of their frequencies," the shadowy man said, and then, like Kageyama was nothing more than an inconvenience, legs stepped over his prone form and strode towards the cave.

Kageyama pulled himself up onto his forearms. Shimizu had grabbed her rifle again and trained it on the thin man as he approached, but she didn't fire.

"He's n-not controlling you?" Hitoka asked.

"I'm a faulty model," he replied, sounding oddly cheerful about the fact. "I never quite worked right in here." He rapped his knuckles so sharply on the top of his head it made Hitoka flinch.

Now that he wasn't hidden, with whatever tricks he'd used, Kageyama could see that his arms and legs looked almost abnormally long, even on his tall body. His hair was even redder than Shouyou's, true red.

"But as long as they controlled him, they had me, too," he said, nodding in the other man's direction. "What did you do to him?"

"I put him to sleep," Hitoka said.

"Wake him up."

"Hitoka…" Shimizu said in warning, as Kageyama groped around in the sand for his pistol.

But Hitoka fiddled with the knobs on her radio and then the other man, the strong one, sat up. Shimizu snapped her attention, and her gun sights, back onto him.

But the tall man knelt in front of him, and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Ushijima?"

Hitoka shook her head. "W-Wakatoshi," she corrected quietly.

The man's—Wakatoshi's—head turned slowly towards her. She looked terrified; but she met his eyes determinedly. Then he turned just as slowly to look at the tall man.

"Tendou," he said, confused. His voice was a rumbly baritone.

Tendou sat hard in the sand. He craned his head almost entirely to one side, looking a bit broken for a moment, and then said, "Ushiji—Wakatoshi. Is that it? Do you recognize that name?"

The bigger man shook his head. "No. But—it does not feel wrong, either."

Tendou burst into startling laughter. "Well, nice to meet you, Wakatoshi."

Wakatoshi blinked at him. "We have known each other many years."

"No, we haven't," Tendou said. "Not really."

"Boys," Shimizu interrupted, "now is not the time for a reunion. The Vault is going to be looking for all of you, now."

"Yes, sir!" Tendou said easily, saluting her.

"It is not a reunion," Wakatoshi insisted. "We are actually close acquaintances."

"Is an acquaintance all I am to you?" Tendou lamented.

"Oy!" Kageyama shouted, fed up. The group turned to look at him. Tendou waved. "I don't know… what the _fuck_ just happened, but if someone wants to explain after we get the hell out of here, that would be appreciated."

"Let's move," Shimizu said.

Kageyama's fingers twitched on his pistol trigger as the two strange men they'd just picked up followed after her, passing him by without another glance. But Hitoka put a hand on his arm.

"Trust them for now," she said. "Like we trusted you. I'll explain everything soon, but our chances of saving Shouyou just got a little higher."

Resigned, Kageyama nodded. He could refrain from shooting anyone for a little while longer.

*

Several days later, with refuge taken inside of an abandoned, pre-war movie theater, Kageyama stared blankly at the dancing fire they'd stoked. As it turned out, it was a three day journey back to the stronghold where Hitoka and Shimizu had been staying, but true to their word, they had been forthcoming with answers to any and all questions the three men had while they traveled. They were now on the last night of their journey, and would reach in the morning. There was a lot to think about. 

He didn't quite jump, when Hitoka sat down next to him, but it was a near thing. 

"How are you doing, Tobio?" she asked. 

It was almost like she sensed all his remaining confusion. And then he realized, that maybe…

"Are you," he started, and then, "did you use your—just now, did you  _ sense—"  _

She shook her head. "No, no! You were just frowning. A lot." 

"Oh." Kageyama looked into the fire again. "That's just how my face is." 

"Oh." 

Hitoka was, unsurprisingly, more than she seemed. The attribute they'd been trying to foster—to breed—in her had been  _ intelligence.  _ But it went beyond her incredible skill with calculations and odds and insight. Somehow, they'd opened her mind beyond what its limitations should be, for a normal person's. 

In her own words, she "just knew things"; things she shouldn't have been able to know, or had never been told. It wasn't, she told Tendou upon being excitedly questioned, the ability to read minds or move objects without touching them. It was just a sense. But it was never wrong. 

It was that sense that had saved Shouyou. Hitoka had worked for years to suppress their control over him, telling him his killswitch when they were still children, staying his friend despite the danger. Finally she'd freed him from the Vault completely. Then she'd made him forget, all to keep him safe. 

Somehow, she didn't seem to hate Kageyama, even though he'd brought Shouyou back, screwed it all up.

"My whole life," Hitoka murmured quietly, staring into the fire, "I was in search of answers. I thought that was my purpose. They  _ told  _ me it was my purpose. But the questions I asked… were not the ones the Overseer wanted me to ask." 

"But you knew you had to ask them," Kageyama said. "And that's how you figured out… everything."

Hitoka smiled. "I sensed I had to, yeah." 

Kageyama nodded. "So they tried to control you, but they made their own killswitch, in the end. Serves ‘em right." 

Hitoka blinked, and then broke into a smile. "I guess it does!" 

Kageyama took a deep breath. “After we find Shouyou—”

"Hitoka." 

They both turned to see Shimizu standing over them.

"Kiyoko, hi!" Hitoka said breathlessly, as though they hadn't all been sitting around the fire together not twenty minutes earlier, eating dried mole rat jerky. She beamed up at Shimizu, and Kageyama was struck with a strong sense of familiarity.

He knew that look. That was the way Shouyou always looked at him. The thought made his chest tighten unbearably.

"You should sleep," Shimizu told her. "We should start early tomorrow. I still want some hours of daylight left when we get back to the fort to show our new… friends… around."

She cast a still suspicious glance over at Tendou and Wakatoshi, who were experimenting with the adjustable movie theater seats. As they watched, Tendou put his foot right through the decaying cushion of one, pitching forward rapidly and unceremoniously. He would have broken his teeth on the chair in front of it had Wakatoshi not nonchalantly caught him with one arm. Shimizu sighed.

"Okay," Hitoka agreed, standing up and brushing dust off her pants. "Coming?" 

"In a minute," Shimizu reassured her. 

Before Hitoka could walk away, Shimizu reached out, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, almost unconsciously. Hitoka turned bright red, her mouth wobbling into something that might have been a smile, before she scampered off. Shimizu adjusted her glasses on her nose, seeming very unaware of the reaction she'd just caused. Kageyama coughed.

To his surprise, she took Hitoka's spot next to him by the fire. 

"When did you find him?" 

Kageyama looked over at her. "Shouyou?" She nodded. "A couple of months ago… right after they opened the Vault." Half a year, at least, now that he thought about it. Had it already been that long?

"You care about him." 

Kageyama's first instinct was to deny it, but he fought that down. There was no point in denying it. He couldn't anymore.

"Kageyama…" Shimizu took a deep breath. "We'll help you find him. Hitoka wants to help, more than anything. But beyond that, we can't." 

"What?" Kageyama sat up straighter. "Why the hell not?" 

"Isn't that all you want?" Shimizu asked. "To get him back?"

"I want to  _ stop _ them," Kageyama said. 

"If you want to fight, fight," Shimizu interrupted. "But that's your decision."

"We have to," Kageyama said. "You saw how fast they sent people after us."

Shimizu shook her head. "Only when they knew Shouyou was getting close. You saw the Vault. It's spotless. The Overseer erased all the evidence, he doesn't want anyone else finding out about any of this."

"Then what's the  _ point?"  _ Kageyama spat. "What's the point of locking them all away? Why is he so fixated on them at all? The Wasteland is big, and it's dangerous. It's not going to be ruled by a handful of super soldiers." 

"I don't think he wants to rule it," Shimizu said. "I think he wants to rule  _ them."  _

"So, how can you just turn away?" Kageyama pressed. "Shouyou, Hitoka… they aren't safe—"

"Shouyou and Hitoka aren't the same," she said.

"What are you talking about?" 

Shimizu glanced back to where Hitoka was attempting to get comfortable on the hard floor, trying to fluff a bed roll that had no softness left to it whatsoever. Her expression twisted painfully.

"Shouyou was the Overseer's prize," she said. "He wants him back. But Hitoka was a failed experiment. He'll kill her the second he finds her. I know it.  _ She  _ knows it."

"But she still wants to help," Kageyama said.

"Which is why I won't let her," Shimizu said. "I'm not asking you to understand, or like what I'm saying. But you have nothing to lose. I have everything." 

He wanted to argue. He wanted to force her to see reason, but persuasion had never been his strong suit, and the set of her mouth said it was no use to try. 

He thought of the hell the past few days had been, not knowing anything except that Shouyou was gone. He thought of his panic the day Shouyou had appeared out of nowhere after following him on the deathclaw job. He thought of the empty sickness in his gut after the feral ghoul attack, when Shouyou had lain nearly dead in his arms for days.

"I do understand," he said, swallowing with difficulty. But he still didn't like it. 

There was not much else for either of them to say. She got to her feet, leaving him to tend or snuff out the fire. 

"You should sleep, too," she told him. "Maybe you'll understand better when you see Fort Sun. I hope."

"Fort Sun?" 

"Our stronghold," Shimizu said. "Hitoka came up with the name."

Kageyama grit his teeth. "Shimizu!" She turned back to him. "I have to do this… for Hitoka, too. I can't let what she did for him—for all of them, go to waste. Because of me."

He met her eyes unwaveringly, hoping she understood his resolve. 

"Thank you," she said.

For a second, he could have sworn she smiled. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thanks to Ellie for helping me work out logistics for this chapter! that fight scene was her idea and really kept things from dragging... <333


	3. Chapter 3

Unlike the industrial power plant Smog City had overrun, Fort Sun belonged mostly to the open sky and ground. Its perimeter was secured by a high, thick fence, left over from before the Great War; it had since been heavily reinforced, and the only way in not covered in tangles of razor wire were the wide gates at its entrance.

Beyond that, the settlement seemed to be a farming based community, with few closed-air structures in sight, save for the living quarters. As Kageyama began to realize who exactly lived there, it started to become apparent why this was.

"Hitoka's back, she's back!" someone yelped, and he turned to see a whole group of kids streaming in their direction, tumbling over each other and nearly trampling some of the crops in their way in the process.

As Kageyama, and then Wakatoshi and Tendou, stepped through the gate, they faltered. Some of the older ones looked outright afraid, grabbing at the little ones to stop them. It wasn't a fear of strangers, Kageyama realized, looking at their faces. It was fear of something— _someone_ —they knew all too well.

"No sudden movements, Wakatoshi," Tendou said. He was watching the children just as intensely as they were watching him.

Hitoka put a hand on his arm, and Tendou's gaze shifted, as he looked curiously down at it in something like confusion.

"It's alright," she said. "I brought them here. They're both free now, just like us."  

The children's eyes all went wide with shock, but they must believe her. Despite all the people they'd known in their lives, no matter how strong or smart or cruel, Hitoka was the one who had saved them all. It was amazing, how the smallest and softest people were so often the ones others most wanted to believe in.

But maybe that was what made them so dangerous. In the Wasteland, trust was a valuable commodity to have. Someone like Hitoka, or Shouyou, who could make people who were suspicious for a living trust them so easily, had a kind of power not many others possessed. Kageyama knew that well—because he would do anything, for Shouyou. Shimizu, he could tell, felt the same about Hitoka. And now he could see the gears turning in Tendou's head—he wasn't confused about Hitoka reaching out to him. He was surprised that she had included him.

Tendou, they'd learned on the journey back to Fort Sun, had never worked quite right, as far as the Vault was concerned. He and Wakatoshi were an odd pair. While Wakatoshi's attribute was straightforward—his unyielding strength—Tendou's focus has been split between agility and intelligence.

His own cognitive functions had been warped and enhanced, if one could call it that, by the Vault's numerous experiments, leaving him able to distort the brainwave frequencies of others around him a limited amount. Combined with his insanely fast reactive ability, this enabled him to use blind spots caused by his target's missed visual cues to hide his presence in close proximity, even seeming to disappear at times, like he had to Kageyama when they'd fought.

"They didn't know what I could do," he explained, one of those nights around their small campfire. "They tried to find limitations."

The problem with prodding at limits you couldn't see was that it became all too easy to pass them. Tendou _was_ his control name, but it didn't have the same power over him it had on the others. But his steady consciousness, that inability to put him into the trance-like state they could with the other test subjects, earned him longer and longer stints in isolation, left alone to suffer in the unending dark. Eventually, they gave up and ran his tests while he was still alert. To their surprise, he performed _better._

He didn't make excuses or apologies, for doing their bidding even without being under their control. But Kageyama could see the reasons stretching out in the spaces between words. There has been the fear of isolation, ever-present, always waiting to swallow him up. And, there had been Wakatoshi, oblivious and at the mercy of the Overseer. Though the other man didn't seem to realize it, Tendou had been offered the highest chance of looking out for him if he cooperated. He'd taken it.

Kageyama had no way of knowing where Tendou's fondness for Wakatoshi had started, but he thought he could guess, even though Tendou hid his feelings well, under the facade of uncanny silliness. In the time they'd been traveling together, Kageyama had watched Wakatoshi carefully, partly out of distrust, but more out of fascination for these Vault dwellers. When he wasn't trying to kill them, he was nothing but awkward and gentle. And that reminded Kageyama of the other two as well; Wakatoshi, like Hitoka and Shouyou, was stronger than he realized. People had taken advantage of that.

So Kageyama knew he could trust Tendou and Shimizu; because he recognized that none of them would let it happen again.

"Kageyama," a voice called, stirring him from his thoughts. Shimizu was waiting patiently at the door to one of the little housing structures. Her face softened, just slightly, looking at him. "You're exhausted."

"I'm fine," he said.

Shimizu nodded, holding the door open wider for him. "Let's get started."

Now that they were in a secure location, they had a lot of planning to do. Shimizu might not be willing to fight the entire Vault on their behalf, but she still wanted to help him find Shouyou. And Tendou and Wakatoshi had thrown in their lot with Kageyama, for better or worse. The looming storm over their heads had never been darker. They needed to figure out how to launch their assault.

Once he was inside with the rest, Shimizu shut and bolted the door behind them. The space darkened as Hitoka pulled heavy curtains across the windows, leaving them with just the soft glow from the little ceiling lights strung up throughout the room. From under the bed, Shimizu produced a long roll of yellowed paper that she stretched out across a dinged up metal table. The rest of them gathered around it to see it was a map, surprisingly detailed, of the different pockets of the Wasteland.

"Here's where we are," Shimizu said, pointing out their location. "And here's the Vault. Tendou..."

Tendou cocked his head at the paper, staring at it with his characteristically wide eyes. He was the only one who knew where the Overseer's new hideout was. Wakatoshi had always been under their complete influence when he left, and couldn't remember the way.

"I have..." Tendou said, and then looked up at them all, "no idea how to read maps."

A blank silence followed. Shimizu pinched the bridge of her nose beneath her spectacles.

"How did you find _us_ if you can't read a map?" Kageyama demanded.

"I followed him," Tendou said, pointing at Wakatoshi, who looked the most confused of them all.

"But..." Shimizu shook her head. "Wakatoshi, you said you don't remember, right?"

"I do not," Wakatoshi confirmed. "But I could lead the way all the same."

"How?" Kageyama asked. What was the point of inside help if it had no idea where the inside _was?_ "How could you lead without knowing the way?"

Wakatoshi's frown deepened. "It was just a feeling. Telling me where to go. Just like it told me what to do when I got there."

"Great, so," Kageyama said, "we're shit out of luck? We just wander around aimlessly until we walk dick first into a bunch of brainwashed maniacs?"

Shimizu held up a hand. "Kageyama, calm down," she said. "We'll find a way."

"We may already _have_ a way," Hitoka said. She'd been quiet, up until then, staring at the map. "We aren't caught with our pants down, yet. And I think I may know how to find Shouyou, too."

"What?" Kageyama asked.

With a decisive _thud,_ Hitoka thunked her bulky radio down onto the table. "It's the frequencies. Of _course,_ how didn't I see it before..."

"See _what_ before?"

She turned to Kageyama. "When you were approaching the Vault. Did Shouyou have any strange... moments? Where he started acting especially unusual or—"

"Yes," Kageyama recalled. "Yeah, the closer we got, the more he started having these, like... I don't know what to call them. Almost seizures, but he'd just collapse and go totally still, and I could never get him to wake up, it seemed like. Like, I wasn't the one bringing him out of it, it would just suddenly... stop."

Hitoka covered her mouth. "That must have been me."

Kageyama raised an eyebrow. "Explain."

"Each of us—every person—has a slightly different mental frequency," Hitoka said. "When I was still in the Vault, I spent a lot of time examining this phenomenon. One of the ones I knew best was Shouyou's, of course. And with this—" she held up her radio, "—I can find people. Most of the older people here didn't come with us straight from the Vault, like the children. In a lot of cases, I even had to disrupt the Vault's control over them."

"Like you did with me," Wakatoshi said.

"Yes."

Kageyama squinted at her. "That's... not a normal radio, is it?"

Hitoka smiled. "The Vault liked it when we had our own projects to occupy us. I worked on this for a long time. It was hard to keep them from finding out what I was doing, but it paid off."

"So what does this mean?" Kageyama asked. "You can find Shouyou with it?"

"I found him before," she said. "When you got closer. I was trying to... to tell him not to come. But it didn't work." She looked crestfallen.

Kageyama could only imagine what it must have been like, knowing full well what awaited Shouyou at the Vault, but being powerless to stop him returning. No wonder she had arrived right after they did. She must have been trying to beat them there.

"But we have no idea where he is, now," Kageyama said. "If he had to get close before..."

"We can boost the signal," Hitoka said.

"That could attract unwanted attention," Shimizu interjected. "That's exactly why we never did it before."

"Because we never had a reason to," Hitoka argued. "And we'll have to do it anyway, to find the Overseer."

Kageyama's gaze slid over to Shimizu, but her expression remained stony. She hadn't told Hitoka, he realized, that she planned for their involvement to end with finding Shouyou. He didn't envy her the task.

"We can do it in bursts," Hitoka went on. "It doesn't have to be broadcast all the time. His frequency will be constant." Shimizu nodded reluctantly.

"How will that help us find the Overseer, though?" Kageyama asked. He ignored Shimizu's sharp warning glance. "You know his?"

"No," Hitoka said. "And even if I did, he'd be covering it up somehow. For that, I'll need Wakatoshi's cooperation."

"What would I have to do?"

"We would need you..." Hitoka swallowed nervously, "to let the control take over, again. But it would be me, to activate it."

Wakatoshi contemplated this for a long time. "Being aware of myself is something I don't want to give up again, now that I am free."

"I know," Hitoka said. "We'll find another way, if—"

"But you helped us all," he continued. "If I can help you now, then I will."

Hitoka's eyes went instantly teary. "Thank you, Wakatoshi." She sniffled and wiped her nose, quickly, as her mouth set into a determined line. "I'll need some help setting this up."

To boost the signal, the radio would need to be plugged in to a tall satellite that had been set up in the midst of a copse of trees and covered in vegetation to disguise it. The lines had been disconnected, and Tendou gladly took the task of scurrying up the trees to hook everything back up. Hitoka, meanwhile, busied herself with the connections on the radio.

Instead of joining the group, Shimizu left them to it, walking further into the settlement past the crops and crowd of children without a word. No one aside from Kageyama appeared to notice; he followed her.

She headed for a workstation propped against the side of a steel-sided barn, where she disassembled her rifle to inspect and clean it. Kageyama joined her, silently dismantling the pistol she'd given him.

"So she wants to help," he said after the quiet had stretched on. "And you haven't told her you're against it."

"I will when I need to," Shimizu said. "She wants to help everybody with everything. That's not possible out here."

No, it really wasn't. Kageyama knew that well. There was a reason nobody in the Wasteland gave a shit about anyone else. It just caused problems. Still…

"It wasn't really possible in there, either," he said. "But…"

Shimizu set the rifle barrel down on the table harder than was probably necessary. "She's _done_ enough. She's been through enough. If this terrible plan fails, and it _will,_ she'll—"

"You don't know it will," Kageyama said. "You think she's going to go from being locked up by them, to being locked up by you?"

"I'm not locking her up," Shimizu said, her eyes narrowing. "I'm keeping her safe."

"Ignoring the problem isn't going to make it go away—"

"And your plan worked so well, did it?" she fired back, and Kageyama went silent. "Shouyou's safe now?"

He grit his teeth, and she looked away, taking a few deep breaths.

"I'm sorry," she said, at length. "You didn't know."

He waved her off. "Let's just agree that neither of us has any idea what the fuck is going on or how to deal with it."

"Amen to that."

"But if it comes down to it," he said, "even if a fight comes to you—will you be okay?"

She nodded. "We're the majority here, by Hitoka's calculations."

"Half are children," Kageyama pointed out.

"And they were raised to fight, just like you and I were," Shimizu reminded him. "So we'll fight."

Her expression filtered sideways, and he followed her line of sight. Tucked away near the workbench was a kind of tall metal frame with a sheet over it, fluttering in the breeze. He hadn't paid it much attention before, but the sheet had slipped, partially, revealing a shape underneath—also metal, vaguely man-shaped. A sturdy looking edge of something was visible, a helmet of some sort.

He looked at her. "Is that…"

"That?" Shimizu said, expression carefully blank. "That's nothing."

Before he could raise any further questions, Hitoka called out to them.

"Kageyama! Quick, come—"

Kageyama turned and raced back to where she was waiting with the radio, staring at it with wide eyes.

"Is it Shouyou?" he asked. "You already—"

Hitoka shook her head and put her finger to her lips. They all kept quiet, waiting anxiously, until:

_"Kageyama, if you hear this, if you can respond—"_

It wasn't Shouyou's voice, but he still recognized it.

_"Where are you? Why didn't you come back with him, he won't tell us—"_

Kageyama grabbed the microphone. "Yamaguchi! Yamaguchi, can you hear me?"

_"Ye—yes! I've—Tsukki, I got him, he's alive—"_

"What did you just say?" Kageyama demanded, microphone gripped between his fingers so hard the skin paled. "Come back _with him?_ Is Shouyou—"

_"He's here."_

That was Tsukishima. Hitoka gasped.

"Is he okay?" Kageyama asked. "Is he—"

_"He's not hurt."_

Kageyama sagged in relief, head hanging. "Can I—"

_"Something's not right with him."_

Slowly, Kageyama raised his head again. "What do you mean?"

Yamaguchi's voice returned. _"He showed up about… thirty hours ago. He hasn't said anything. He hasn't even moved he's just… he's sitting in the recovery wing. On your bed."_

 _"He did say something when he got here,"_ Tsukishima said. _"I asked him where you were, it was the only thing he reacted to."_

"Tell me what he said."

_"He said he has to eliminate the final threat."_

Kageyama let out a slow breath. "He means me."

_"Yeah, no shit."_

"Listen," Kageyama said, ignoring Tsukishima's sarcasm, because he could hear the underlying note of worry, "I'm coming back. Can you—just make sure he doesn't die of dehydration or anything. But don't try to engage with him."

 _"Wasn't planning on trying to have a heart to heart,"_ the doctor said dryly. _"What the hell is going on?"_

"The Vault was—bad," Kageyama said. "Worse than we thought. I'll explain when I get back, I'm heading over now. Give me two and a half—no, two weeks. Stay in radio contact, I'll lose you for awhile but should be back in range within seven days."

_"And if he kills you when you get here?"_

"Deathclaw couldn't do it," Kageyama said, neglecting to mention that Shouyou might be more dangerous. "You ever going to trust me?"

_"Still waiting on that rent money."_

"See you soon," Kageyama said, shutting off the radio.

"Who was that?" Hitoka asked, voice trembling. "How do you know he wants to kill—"

"He went back to Smog City," Kageyama said. "That was one of the doctors who took us in. My guess is Shouyou didn't know where I was, so he wants me to go to him."

"But he said—"

"I know about the Vault," Kageyama said. "He needs to eliminate the threat. Makes sense." It also meant Shouyou was completely under their control. Kageyama resisted the urge to punch something.

"No…" Hitoka said. "He called you the _final_ threat? You aren't."

"Maybe I'm the only one he knows of," Kageyama said. "Doesn't matter. I'm going to him." He looked at Shimizu. "Can I—"

"Take whatever you need," she said.

"Then you have to take me," Hitoka told them.

They both turned to stare at her. She squared herself up under their gazes, expression skittish but determined.

"We already know where he is," Kageyama said. He couldn't put her in needless danger.

"You might need my help to trigger the killswitch," she said. "If he got in range of them, they could have modified it—we have no idea what you could be walking into."

"All the more reason for you not to go," Shimizu said.

"I _said_ I would save Shouyou." Hitoka clenched her fists at her side so hard her arms shook. "I said I would."

For a brief moment, Kageyama caught Shimizu's eye, knowing she was replaying the conversation they'd just had. He didn't want to step in any further.

"I can't go with you," Shimizu said, finally. "I have to stay here, in case…" In case the Overseer found Fort Sun.

Hitoka blinked at her and then ran forward, to hug her tightly.

"I'll come back soon," she promised.

"We'll stay in contact," Kageyama said, nodding at Shimizu over Hitoka's head. He knew her safety was in his hands now. He wouldn't take it lightly.

He'd bring her and Shouyou back together.

*

Traveling with Hitoka reminded Kageyama a bit of the first time he'd traveled with Shouyou, just after they met. Hitoka knew more about the Wasteland, having lived out in it for months at that point, but she hadn't been as exposed to the wilder aspects of it. She wasn't as naturally inclined as Shouyou was to wanting to confront it; instead, she seemed to lean towards exploration, and study.

Shouyou might have gained a knack for fighting off radroaches early on, but without Kageyama there to stop him, he would have eaten any variety of poisonous or irradiated plant and died as soon as he'd set foot in the forest. Hitoka, on the other hand, had almost climbed straight up onto Kageyama's shoulders the first time a mole rat had burrowed out of the ground near her; but she could easily identify the different kinds of flowers and weeds it was safe to eat, and which ones to stay away from. It was no wonder she and Shouyou had been so good at looking out for each other.

Though both their nerves were running high on the journey back, they still found time to talk. They traded stories, good and bad, about life in the Wasteland, what it was like in the Vault. And about Shouyou—even with how isolated they'd both been, Hitoka still had enough stories for the whole journey about growing up together. And she was fascinated hearing about how quickly he'd taken to the Wasteland.

"He saved _you_ from one of those… those clawed death—"

"Deathclaws."

"From one of those?" Hitoka asked one day, as they neared Smog City.

"Well…" Kageyama wobbled his hand. "Maybe not _saved._ When I first met him, though…"

They were just passing a familiar trailer park, no longer as abandoned as it had been the last time Kageyama and Shouyou had happened upon it. People had come back now that the Glowing One the two of them had fought there—and killed—had been finished off. Kageyama remembered that first harrowing encounter all too well. It seemed like just yesterday, now, with how worried he was all over again for Shouyou.

It took a little longer to get to Smog City than it had when he'd single-mindedly carried Shouyou the whole way. Hitoka was able to keep pace with him surprisingly well, but she was much shorter and not used to grueling treks across the earth. When they did finally reach, it was just over his projected time frame of two weeks—fifteen days and some odd hours. For the past few days they'd been able to get into rushed, whispered contact with Tsukishima and Yamaguchi. Nothing had changed on their end; Shouyou still sat in the exact same spot. If he was eating anything, it wasn't when they were watching.

"Are we just going to… go in?" Hitoka asked nervously, once they stood outside the door to the hospital.

Kageyama nodded, and knocked sharply on the door. Yamaguchi peered out, before quickly ushering them inside, where Tsukishima was already waiting.

"Nice to meet you," he said warmly to Hitoka, despite the gravity of the situation. "Sorry everything's just as much a mess out here as in the Vault." It made her smile, just barely.

"You should both get out of here, for now," Kageyama said. "I don't know, I mean—if other people see what he can do, he might—"

"Judging by what you told us, if _you_ see what he can do, you'll need a doctor after," Tsukishima said. "Besides, it's _my_ clinic. If you can't stop him from tearing it up, I'm going to have to."

The thought that the spindly doctor might be able to do anything if Kageyama was overpowered was ridiculous, but he recognized the bullheaded support all the same. "Fine. Just hang back, for now, though."

Cautiously, he and Hitoka made their way further into the clinic, past the waiting room and through the living quarters where they'd all had dinner together so many times. The recovery wing was towards the back of the clinic, and beyond that, the operating rooms. Shouyou was still waiting in the recovery wing.

Or at least, that's what Yamaguchi had said. But when they looked into the room with its rows of beds, all of them were empty.

"He's… gone," Kageyama said. He dropped to his hands and knees, to look under all the beds, but there was nobody else in the room besides them.

"Are there any ways into this room besides the one we just came in?" Hitoka asked.

"No," Kageyama said. "It's just back that way, or…" Ahead, into the operating rooms. Wordlessly in agreement, they crept on.

There were just two operating rooms, side by side, and even in the months Kageyama had lived there, he'd never seen them both used at the same time. The first was better stocked for that reason, the overhead light buzzing to harsh brightness when he flicked it on.

Nothing.

The door to the second room was open already, and it was dim inside. The light here didn't work. Looking into it, Kageyama could see it, too, was empty. Now feeling a slight sense of panic, he hurried inside to search it more thoroughly, certain they'd missed something. Maybe there was a back door he hadn't known about, or some place somebody small could hide.

The door closed behind him with a _snap,_ the clicking of a lock following. _Shit._

Kageyama whirled around, just in time to see that Shouyou had been in the room all along, hiding unseen behind the door. Even with Kageyama looking right at him, he moved almost faster than the eye could track. Kageyama didn't have time to react before Shouyou kicked him in the abdomen with such speed that it sent him crashing back into the gurney behind him.

Shouyou—or perhaps this was just _Hinata,_ now, judging by the look in his eyes—didn't give him a moment to recover. Kageyama raised his arms to block his face as Hinata pummeled him with an empty oxygen canister he'd picked off the ground, the aluminum thudding painfully against bone. The noise reverberated with the banging on the door, Hitoka trapped outside, shouting his name.

"Shouyou!" Kageyama tried to yell over the din. "Shouyou, stop—it's me! Don't make me hurt you!"

He might not be faster than Hinata, but he was still stronger. As Hinata brought the tank down to bash him yet again, Kageyama managed to grab it. They wrestled for it, but as soon as it became clear Kageyama was winning, Hinata relinquished it, sending Kageyama reeling off balance again. This left him open to another bruisingly fast attack, but this time, instead of deflecting, he braced himself and absorbed the impact of another kick to the ribs. He felt at least one, maybe more, crack; he choked back a shout of pain as he grabbed for Hinata. After letting him get in close, it was easier—just enough for Kageyama to seize him around the waist.

"I don't think—he's responding to the killswitch—" Kageyama tried to shout out to Hitoka. Hinata tried to dislodge his hold, and he winced, trying to hide his eyes and nose as he was forced to take several punches straight to the face. He jammed his head into Hinata's side and forced him, with a great effort, closer to the door.

"I'm trying his frequency—" Hitoka cried back desperately. "There's something— _wrong,_ I can't… I've f-found it but it's fluctuating too much! It's like there's multiple influences controlling him! But I don't—"

Something that had been bothering Kageyama for days snapped into clarity. Up until that moment, he hadn't understood the words Tsukishima had relayed to him, even though he knew there was something off about them— _eliminate the final threat._

"Hitoka!" he rasped, and then finally resorted to an attack—with all his strength, he shoved forward, slamming Hinata up against the door with the full weight of his body. Viciously, he palmed the side of Hinata's face, pressing until his ear was against the door. "It's not a threat to the Vault. It's a threat to _him—_ to _Hinata!"_

He could almost hear the gears whirring in Hitoka's head on the other side of the door. "He's—he's fighting it," she said. "That's the other influence—it's Shouyou!"

"What—did you say to him—" Kageyama cut off in a strangled yell as Hinata managed to turn enough to sink teeth into the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, still trying to fight him off. His ribs ached and his arms trembled with the force of trying to keep Hinata pinned. "The day you escaped the Vault! What did you say?!"

There was silence on the other end, and then:

"Help," she said, almost too quiet to be heard through the door. And then, again, louder. "Shouyou, we're here—we came to help you!"

_Of course that was how._

"Keep… talking…" Kageyama said, forcing Hinata's head back against the door as he struggled. _"Listen_ closely, you little shit—"

"Shouyou—" Hitoka's voice trembled, but she knew what she had to say. Or at least, now she knew where to start. "It's Hitoka!"

For a moment, Kageyama thought he saw a brief gleaming, of something other than murderous intent in those still familiar eyes.

"Remember how many times you helped me when we were little? You always seemed to know, when I wasn't getting enough to eat—I don't know how you managed to sneak it out of your room, but the sandwiches you brought always tasted so much better than the ones I got. Maybe because I knew you cared?"

Hinata, straining with the effort, face red and eyes bugging, twisted enough in Kageyama's grasp to kick his foot up and back. Kageyama groaned in agony when it caught him square between the legs.

"He definitely doesn't—like that—" he sputtered to Hitoka.

"You saved my life!" she continued. "They were going to kill me, but you didn't let them! You recognized me then—you can do it now!"

Another hard kick, and Kageyama's vision swam. Nausea flooded his senses. Combined with the rest of the injuries he'd suffered, on top of days of walking, and little rest before that, it was finally piling up; getting to be too much. He staggered, falling backwards painfully onto the floor. Now Hinata had the upper hand and he took it, dropping a knee onto Kageyama's chest hard enough it made Kageyama gasp. Then hands were closing around his throat, making it hard to breathe at all. He tried to force Hinata off, but he could already tell he was weak, too weak.

"Fuck you," he wheezed, through a steadily closing windpipe. "I didn't… I didn't almost… watch you die for this. Watch you—play in the rain the first time… do you even remember that?"

Hinata made a snarled, abrupt sound above him, and Kageyama fought to keep his eyes open, but the room was spinning around him. It would be so much better, so much easier, just to close his eyes. They started to slip shut.

"First time… you learned… you had freckles," he mumbled. He was losing the feeling in his lips; it was hard to speak. "The… first time _I…_ learned you did. Still haven't—still never got… to touch them all…"

He could feel something on his face, faintly. Wet. He remembered Shouyou jumping through puddles like an idiot, like a child. He had to still be in there, somewhere. It had to be stronger than the nothingness he was now.

"Do you even know what it's called?" Kageyama whispered, not even sure if he was still speaking out loud anymore. "That thing you like. It's called _a kiss."_

And darkness swallowed him.

But not forever.

When he came to, he was breathing again. Slowly, he opened his eyes, and looked up into a pair of bright, brown ones. They had welled over, filled with tears, the water that had splashed onto his face. He blinked, slowly, this new turn of events confusing him as much as the lack of oxygen to his brain.

"Kageyama—" Shouyou said, before collapsing heavily on top of him in a fit of sobbing. Kageyama sucked in a hiss of pain.

"Are we fine, now?" he asked. "Are you back?"

"Kageyama?" he heard Hitoka call through the door.

"I think we're good."

"Oh, thank goodness," she said, and then it sounded like her legs gave up, a small thud banging the doorframe outside as she slumped against it.

"I'm—so sorry—" Shouyou wailed into Kageyama's chest. "I—I couldn't stop. I just kept thinking I had to stop you—"

"That's because your brain is too small," Kageyama said, "idiot."

Shouyou cried harder, and hugged him harder, which hurt like hell and might have been punishment for the name-calling. Kageyama couldn't bring himself to care.

"I don't mind," Kageyama said. "That you wanted to stop me. It just means you _knew,_ somehow. It felt like a threat to the Vault parts of you, but you still knew."

"Knew what?"

Kageyama brushed a hand through his hair, fingers combing all the way through, reveling in the softness. "You knew I wasn't ever going to just _let you go._ I told you I've got you, remember?"

Shouyou raised his head, finally, to look at Kageyama. And then a smile found its way back, finally, and he nodded. "And I've got you, too."

"Better not forget it," Kageyama grumbled. It was the least Shouyou could do, at this point.

Shouyou nodded. "Hey," he said softly, "you said… it's called a kiss?"

Exhausted, Kageyama laid his head back against the hard floor, and smiled. "Why don't you try it and find out?"

It might be hell on his ribs; but he could endure a little more pain. As long as Shouyou was with him, he thought he might be able to endure anything at all.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter.

Several weeks after Shouyou and Kageyama had been reunited, Shouyou was already finding it possible to be annoyed at Kageyama again. He had sworn, after Kageyama had found him, that he wouldn't get mad at Kageyama for at least two months.

That had been short-lived.

"So stupid," he muttered to himself, as he made his way back to the hospital where they were still staying. After everything, Kageyama still acted like he couldn't do anything himself. Shouyou was determined to show him that wasn't true in the slightest.

He entered through the side door and stomped his way into the kitchen to take off his shoes and jacket.

"Oh, Shouyou!" Hitoka said when she saw him. She hadn't returned to Fort Sun yet—they planned to all go back together once Kageyama had made a full recovery. "I didn't realize you'd gone out. What did you get?"

Shouyou's grumpiness receded, to be replaced with embarrassment, as Hitoka smiled at him expectantly. Worse, Yamaguchi was also looking over at him in curiosity, and Tsukishima, who was in the room, would be able to overhear any conversation, even if he was acting like he wasn't paying attention.

"N-nothing!" Shouyou said, too quickly. Bad idea. Now Tsukishima was paying attention.

"Oh?" he asked immediately, looking over from the book he was reading. "So secretive… normally you never shut up."

"W-well, you always have to be rude about it!" Shouyou said, sticking out his tongue.

Tsukishima's expression stretched into a smile that was as good as a warning. "Me? Rude?"

"Neither of you is exactly wrong…" Yamaguchi said, under his breath.

"I was just wondering where he went so quietly," Tsukishima insisted, his eyes crinkled behind his glasses like a snake that was having far too much fun playing with its food. "It's very uncharacteristic. Were you… going to buy something to cheer up your ailing friend, perhaps?"

This was not… exactly the case, although Shouyou had gone out to buy something for Kageyama. Technically.

"None of your business," Shouyou said.

"It's very sweet," Tsukishima said, "sickeningly so, in fact. But you know, I don't think he likes it very much. Cooped up in here because you nearly killed him, and now relying on you doting on him… Maybe instead of babying him, you should—"

Shouyou spun around, dumping what he'd purchased from a nearby vendor from the little bag onto the kitchen table. The other three peered closer at them—and then realized. Hitoka yelped. Yamaguchi covered a grin with his hand. Tsukishima's expression turned to stone.

"I'm not trying to baby him. I'm trying," Shouyou growled, "to fuck him. I've been _waiting._ For _weeks._ So if you're _done—"_ Tsukishima waved a hand, speechless for once. Shouyou snatched up the bottle of lube he'd managed, at great cost to his humility, to purchase, and shuffled off quickly towards the recovery wing.

Kageyama was waiting for him, propped up in the hospital bed. His expression was concerningly unamused, and for a moment, Shouyou wondered if he'd heard the entire exchange.

"Decided to come back, huh?" Kageyama asked him. "Why do you look so suspicious?"

"Me?" Shouyou squeaked. "I was just coming to say hello!"

Kageyama raised an eyebrow. "An hour ago, you told me you hoped I'd get eaten alive by bloodbugs, and then you left."

"That's because you were being unreasonable."

"I was being realistic," Kageyama said. He squinted at Shouyou, and the bag he was carrying. "What is that?"  

"It's, um…" Shouyou faltered, suddenly nervous. This was dumb, this was really dumb—Kageyama was still injured, because of _Shouyou,_ no less, and Shouyou was only thinking about _sex._ "It's nothing," he said softly. "And I'm sorry. For leaving."

Now Kageyama looked even more suspicious. "What the hell, idiot? I'm not really upset."

"You're not?" Shouyou asked.

"No," Kageyama said, huffing a laugh through his nose. "It's more funny, really. That you're so frustrated about it."

"I'm just—" Shouyou glared at him. "It's not funny! I have all these… feelings, and I don't know what to do about them—"

"Jack off," Kageyama said.

"I hate that phrase," Shouyou whined.

"Jerk it. Wank. Beat off. Fap—"

"Stooop," Shouyou begged him. He staggered to Kageyama's bed and crawled pitifully into it next to him, like a dying man. Kageyama moved over to make room for him and Shouyou planted himself face down into the sheets.

"Masturbate," Kageyama added helpfully.

Shouyou groaned into the bed. "I don't _want_ to masturbate. I want you to—" His lips moved around the words _fuck me,_ but wouldn't form it again. His nerve, briefly located by his pent up arousal and his irritation with Tsukishima, had fled once more. "I want _you,"_ he said, lamely.

Kageyama relented. "I know," he said. He poked Shouyou in the side, but Shouyou didn't budge. "But I told you we can't, there's no lube here, and I'd rather die before I ask one of the doctors—"

"I bought some," Shouyou mumbled.

"What?"

Shouyou rustled around in his plastic bag, freeing his purchase to squash it gently into Kageyama's stomach. Kageyama took it from him, and was silent for entirely too long, before saying, in a slightly strangled voice, "You bought this?"

Shouyou nodded.

More silence. Then, an unmistakable snort of laughter.

"I'm going to kick you in the crotch again," Shouyou said, hair flying back from his face as he yanked his head up to glare at Kageyama. _"You_ said—" He flattened his hair down with his hands and lowered his voice as deep as it would go. _"If you want my dick in you—"_

Kageyama didn't even bother to retaliate; he was laughing too hard. "You are _desperate,"_ he said.

Shouyou's stomach seemed to crunch in on itself, partly in embarrassment; but mainly because Kageyama, when he smiled, looked like everything Shouyou could ever want in the world. But Kageyama was that even when he didn't smile. It must have showed on Shouyou's face.

Kageyama's expression softened, and he ruffled a hand through Shouyou's hair. "I don't mind that you are…"

"I am," Shouyou said. He sighed and rolled over, curling himself into a ball and scooting up against Kageyama's side. "I really am. A lot… happened, a lot of stuff I still don't really get."

"I know—" Kageyama started to say, but Shouyou shook his head, wanting him to listen.

"The one thing I do get—is that everything was about you."

"What do you mean?"

"You… you said I called you the 'final threat'," Shouyou said. "But I think it was more than that. I think it meant me, too."

"How could you be a threat to the Vault after they controlled you?" Kageyama asked.

"Not a threat to the Vault," Shouyou said. "A threat to myself—the other me. As long as you were alive… I'd always want to be with you, more than anything else." He glanced up at Kageyama nervously. He didn't know how else to say it, but he had felt that; it had resonated in him before the Vault had tried to take control of him again, and even more strongly once he'd been freed of its influence. It had been so strong that it had led him back to the place he'd believed Kageyama would find him, despite how warped the intent had become.

The Vault-controlled part of him had understood the threat to itself in that one promise: _I've got you,_ they'd said. Kageyama had refused to let him go.

"Oh," Kageyama said hoarsely.

"I want to be with you," Shouyou pleaded.

He knew he sounded desperate. He thought that was okay. He'd betrayed Kageyama, beaten him, tried to kill him, all without a shred of emotion, because somebody had taken the ability to feel it away from him. After how hard they'd fought to bring it back, Shouyou wasn't going to hide it.

"You know I want you, too, right?" Kageyama asked, and Shouyou nodded, and crawled up higher on the bed to kiss him.

Shouyou's whole body buzzed with anticipation, as he pressed the tips of his shaky fingers to Kageyama's face to try and ground himself. "Just tell me… what to do…"

"I'm, uh—" Kageyama said, as Shouyou pressed a string of kisses to his lips, not much caring if they were off center or messy, "I'm not sure how well I'll be able to… my sides are still kind of…" His ribs weren't fully healed, and were still fairly sore. He was moving around without assistance (besides Shouyou hovering at his side), but any vigorous movement had been so far avoided.

"It's okay," Shouyou mumbled. His mouth was wet, slick from licking at Kageyama's lips a little too eagerly. But Kageyama was staring at him with heavy eyelids now, eyes darker than normal, pupils blown wide. A string of spit connected them even when Shouyou drew back and he groaned softly, feeling his arousal knotting in his belly, and between his legs.

"Fuck," Kageyama said, but it was more frustrated than passionate. "It's _not_ really—I wanted…"

"What?" Shouyou asked, suddenly nervous all over again. "Is this—is this not okay?"

"I just wanted to be able to… do _more,"_ Kageyama said, "for you. The first time we…"

"Kageyama," Shouyou said, exasperated. "You know anything we do is gonna make me— _gwaaah—"_

"I know that, you're hopeless," Kageyama said. Shouyou glared, patting Kageyama's cheeks sharply in objection. Kageyama trapped his hands between his own larger ones. "I'd thought about it a lot, though."

Shouyou's irritation faded, as Kageyama raised Shouyou's hand to his mouth, lips brushing his knuckles.

"Can you tell me what you thought about?" he whispered.

Kageyama's eyes flicked to his, one heartstopping second of intense blue, before he was back to focusing on Shouyou's fingers, scattering more kisses across them.

"The first time I got to be inside you," he said softly, "I wanted it to be everything you've needed. I wanted to take care of you."

Shouyou shut his eyes. He really was hopeless; he was already overwhelmed. "Y-you already take care of me."

"You know what I mean," Kageyama murmured, voice so low Shouyou was sure he could feel it rumbling up his spine as he shivered helplessly, pressing closer to Kageyama.

"Mmmh… you should try and show me anyway."

His feigned ignorance won him a smile from Kageyama, which felt good—just as good as the tightening heat inside him. He didn't want Kageyama to worry about stupid things; he just wanted Kageyama.

Kageyama held out his hand. "Lube," he demanded, and Shouyou searched around on the bed for it, smacking it down into Kageyama's palm when he found it. "And get your pants off."

As soon as Shouyou had complied, Kageyama began to tug him into his lap.

"I won't hurt you?" he asked.

"I'll be fine," Kageyama grunted, which didn't sound entirely reassuring—but there was too much else at stake for Shouyou to care about. Kageyama knew what he could handle. As for what Shouyou could handle… "This is going to feel like a lot. So if it gets to be too much—"

"I'll be fine, too!" Shouyou said. And he would be, he could sense that now. Now that he understood where the old fears had come from, how he'd been conditioned to feel ashamed and repulsed by himself. They had turned over that stone, revealed that what he had with Kageyama was safer and stronger and more real than the ghosts of the Vault could ever be—he could keep those fears at bay.

Kageyama stroked a hand down his back. "Come closer to me… up on your knees." Shouyou shuffled forward, until he could press against Kageyama, hands braced on his shoulders, straddling his lap. This way he wasn't putting any pressure on Kageyama's lower body, either—good. He smiled at Kageyama, who looked up at him and said, "Kiss me."

It was an unnecessary demand; Shouyou would have done it anyway. Shouyou could hardly stand not to kiss him, with the way Kageyama was looking at him. Like maybe if Shouyou _didn't_ kiss him, he'd just go on looking at him forever, the anticipation just as good as what was to come next. But Shouyou couldn't wait any longer.

He moaned softly as Kageyama slipped his tongue into his mouth, a little slower than Shouyou might have wished for. But Kageyama shushed him as usual, running his hands down Shouyou's sides under his shirt, skating even lower over his bared skin. This was still new, but good, Kageyama's fingertips indenting flesh that still felt secretive and a little bit forbidden, even if Shouyou knew better now.

Shouyou pressed back into Kageyama's hands as Kageyama gripped him more firmly, and then gasped, breaking the wet contact of their mouths as Kageyama slipped the fingers of one hand between the cleft of Shouyou's ass. It was startling, to say the least. They were cool and slick and then they were rubbing against him, where so much of the oversensitive need within him seemed to be gathered.

Shouyou went rigid, save for the trembling of his limbs, as Kageyama stroked against his hole.

"I want to get you ready myself," Kageyama said. "I want to at least do that—can I—"

"Y-yeah," Shouyou said, voice a breathy whisper.

"You have to relax."

"O-okay, I know—it just…" Shouyou shut his eyes, biting his lip. It was so good to have Kageyama touching him there, finally; it was hard to calm down, but he knew he had to try. "I want it _now."_

"Dumbass," Kageyama said, skating his lips against Shouyou's neck and throat. "You're not making this any easier on either of us…" He pressed a finger to Shouyou's entrance, and Shouyou gasped at the increase in pressure and sensation as he felt it enter him, just slightly.

It hurt, more than he'd thought it would in his naive excitement. But now he was no longer a stranger to pain—only this was worth it. It didn't make him want it any less, it only made him more determined.

He eased himself back, feeling Kageyama's finger slip deeper inside himself, and gasped. The stretch was noticeable, it burned; it wasn't enough.

"Easy, easy…" Kageyama whispered.

"Want… more—" Shouyou told him.

"Gonna be a lot more," Kageyama said, "once you're on my cock—"

Shouyou moaned, unable to hold it back. The coarseness of it still embarrassed him, but now that he was more used to it, more open to it—he realized he liked it. He always had but it had frightened him before. Now…

"T-tell me…" he said, voice breaking. "K-Kageyama…"

"You're gonna find out in a minute," Kageyama said, sounding vaguely exasperated—but when he kissed Shouyou again so he could murmur directly against his lips, Shouyou could feel the hint of a smile there. "Just let me do this so you can have me like you want. Fuck, you're gonna have me so deep in you… for the first time, Shou, I'm gonna make sure it's good for you…"

Shouyou's breathing came sharp and ragged, whining out of him as Kageyama pushed a second finger in alongside the first. It still hurt but it was a slow, steady ache now—and then Kageyama started to thrust his fingers in, and out, before stretching them wide.

Shouyou jolted in his lap. Just the feeling, of being opened like that—he gripped Kageyama's shoulders tight, fingers digging into muscle.

"Close," Shouyou grated out. He grit his teeth, fighting with the rising surge inside him. _Not yet, come on…_

"You can come," Kageyama said reassuringly.

"Not… this time," Shouyou panted. "Not until…"

"Okay," Kageyama said. "Slower."

That was easier said than done. Just because Shouyou was more aware of his past didn't make him the least bit less sensitive when it came to Kageyama touching him, Kageyama's hands on him. The feeling was still all tangled up with something Shouyou had never had before, something nearly too overwhelming to name—only now he was aware of how hard they had both fought, in their own ways, to keep from losing each other.

He kissed Kageyama over and over again, just to stay grounded—Kageyama's teeth grazing his bottom lip, Kageyama's fingers steadily working him open, Kageyama's voice murmuring low and heated, all began to rush together until his head was spinning and he was sure he would finally give in to the bliss of it too soon, and then Kageyama was trying to shift him again, telling Shouyou that now, _now_ he could—

"Come take what you want," Kageyama murmured, and Shouyou just shook in his arms as Kageyama ended up guiding him where he needed to be, helping him to lower himself until he could feel the hot tip of Kageyama's cock at his entrance, and keep going—head fallen back, eyes closed and teeth biting hard against his lower lip as Kageyama pushed inside him, so much, to take in all at once. But he didn't stop, not until he sank all the way down, not until he was filled.

"To-Tobio," he gasped, unable to say more than that, and Kageyama nodded, his eyes furrowed closed, mouth open and silent. He hadn't said a word about his injuries the entire time. "A-are you okay?"

Kageyama's eyes opened slowly, lashes fluttering as he looked at Shouyou. His gaze was dark and hazy. "I'm… yeah." He ran his hands over Shouyou's hips carefully, before raising them to his face and pressing their lips together again—not quite a kiss, but heavy, desperate breaths exchanged and shared. "I'm okay. You feel—good, you make me feel so good…"

Shouyou had no real idea what to do next, only the vaguest idea; but the way it had felt when Kageyama pushed inside him… He shifted experimentally, rolling his hips, and barely managed to stifle a cry at the last moment. Kageyama was _deep—_ so deep inside him. He'd never felt anything like that before, he'd never even been allowed to _touch_ or be touched by anyone.

"M-me, too," Shouyou gasped. "Feels good… for me, too—"

Even though it still ached, Kageyama hot inside him, filling him up, was all he could focus on. He rocked himself in Kageyama's lap, the steady rhythm building faster and faster as Kageyama's breathing sped up, spurred on by the helpless noises that fell from Kageyama's mouth, soft moans and gasps and the occasional murmur of his name.

"Like this?" he panted, unable to resist rocking just a bit harder, hips lifting up before settling back down and something in the angle changed—the most shocking jolt of pleasure, mind-numbing, scorched its way up his spine, leaving him momentarily frozen.

"Right there," Kageyama groaned, like he knew exactly what Shouyou was thinking.

And then it was Kageyama's hands guiding him, firm on his hips, making Shouyou grind in place on his cock in torturous circles—putting more and more unending pressure on that same lightning rod spot until his toes curled, and he shivered uncontrollably, wave upon wave of heat engulfing him, moans choking out of him with every movement. Kageyama put a hand on the back of his head to push Shouyou's face into his neck, trying to muffle the sounds.

"I'm—" Shouyou gasped desperately into Kageyama's warm skin, "I can't— _ah—"_

"That's it," Kageyama said. He trailed his fingers over Shouyou's stomach before brushing them against his cock. As soon as he took Shouyou in his hand, stroking him with the lightest touch, Shouyou knew trying to hold out any longer was a lost cause. "Let me—let me make you come—"

 _"Yes,"_ Shouyou sobbed, "yes, yes—"

He shuddered, and then he couldn't stop it—he spilled over, finishing suddenly onto Kageyama's stomach, white hot haze of bliss searing through him so intensely it was almost painful. Even the first time he'd come hadn't been like this; it had been shocking at the time, but this was shattering—he couldn't do anything but ride it out in Kageyama's arms.

 _"Fuck,"_ Kageyama said, through clenched teeth, "fuck, you're so tight—" He crashed their lips together unexpectedly, startling Shouyou, seeking the wet heat of his mouth, rough and demanding. Shouyou's stomach contracted and he felt his muscles jolt all through his body again, and Kageyama moaned against his lips.

 _"Oh—"_ Shouyou breathed, as he felt Kageyama's hips jump beneath his, his big body tightening up all at once before uncoiling, the tension easing from his muscles as he finally spilled warm inside of Shouyou. His fingers clenched and unclenched in Shouyou's hair, and Shouyou wrapped his arms around his neck and clung to him until Kageyama, too, was comfortably still and pliant underneath him.

"I would've," Shouyou said shakily, "been able to last longer than that—but—"

"You did fine," Kageyama mumbled, rubbing Shouyou's back comfortingly.

"You liked it?" Shouyou asked.

"Pretty sure you don't really need me to tell you the answer to that," Kageyama said. He sounded exhausted, but content. "And I _know_ you liked it. I barely had to touch you."

Shouyou tilted his head, confused. "But… you are touching me. A lot."

Kageyama closed his eyes and smiled. "Usually, it takes more effort than that."

Shouyou frowned. "Next time—"

"Give it a rest," Kageyama said. He pulled Shouyou closer, wrapping his arms around him. "Who cares about next time? _This_ time's still pretty damn good."

Shouyou smiled and relaxed into him. There were endless things he wanted to try with Kageyama, and not much time left for it. As soon as Kageyama was fully recovered, they would be leaving their soft bed and the safety of the clinic behind, to face Shouyou's past one final time.

But for now, all things considered, Shouyou supposed he could give it a rest. They deserved it.

*

Fort Sun, Shouyou thought, was the best place he'd ever been.

After Kageyama had healed, they had stocked up on everything they might need and made their return. Though the journey was undertaken knowing the impending confrontation that awaited them, Shouyou couldn't help but feel more at peace than he had ever before on that trek through the stark wilderness. He finally knew who he was and where he came from—and soon, they would finally reckon with that shadowed past.

Even more than that, his friends were with him. Hitoka was an ever buoyant source of company, a bundle of cheerful nerves even Shouyou himself couldn't hope to match. And to his great surprise, the two doctors had set out with them to Fort Sun. Tsukishima said it was to keep an eye on his wayward tenants, but Yamaguchi had told Shouyou in private that they both felt they could lend a pair of helping hands at the fort, after talking to Hitoka. Even if Tsukishima's company was pricklier than the pine tree leaves surrounding them, Shouyou was happy to have it, to know his friends were near.

And Kageyama was with him, again.

This was likely the true reason Fort Sun felt so bright. After they arrived, and Shouyou met Shimizu (she seemed a bit like Hitoka's Kageyama, he thought—Hitoka blushed furiously when he mentioned it), and then had a tour of the fort, they'd been shown to where they were staying.

It was a small little place overall, just a wooden four-walled room with a bed and roof and window, a place to rest and store their things while they planned for what lay ahead. But it was their own space, with the fort's garden and vegetable patch right outside their front door, a place Shouyou shared now with Kageyama. It was something he longed to get used to. But first, they would have to make sure no one could threaten any of them again.

Kageyama and Hitoka had filled Shouyou in on the situation as it stood. It had still been nerve wracking, meeting Wakatoshi and Tendou for the first time. Though they were both older than him, and they wouldn't have often crossed paths in the barracks, Shouyou's still forming memories marked them as potential threats, if not outright dangerous. They were the Vault's enforcers, once.

But Shouyou knew how hated that life could be. The Overseer didn't reward loyalty or brutality. It was expected. Anything less was cause for termination.

"I have liked living free of that," Wakatoshi said, the night before they planned to make their move. They were running through preparations one last time. Wakatoshi would be instrumental in their attack, because he was the only one who could lead them to his captors.

"Me, too," Shouyou murmured.

"Tomorrow," Kageyama said. He pointed again at the spot on the map where Shimizu, Wakatoshi, and Tendou had determined the Overseer was hiding. They had been busy scouting since Kageyama and Hitoka had left, and had finally managed to retrace a path Tendou remembered. "We stop this."

He yanked his hand away in the nick of time. Tendou plunged a knife into the map paper, spearing the wood below. His eyes gleamed as he stared down at their target, skewered through with the pointed knife tip.

"For good," he said with finality.

On their way back to their room, Shimizu called out to Kageyama. Shouyou looked around, surprised not to see Hitoka tagging along with her, but Kageyama seemed to anticipate whatever she wanted to say.

"I know," he said, before she could speak. "We're on our own tomorrow."

Shouyou recalled Kageyama talking to him back at the hospital, telling him of the conversation that had transpired between himself and Shimizu, how she planned not to let Hitoka come with them. He hovered next to Kageyama, wanting to say something—this was his and Hitoka's fight more than anyone else's. But Shimizu held up her hand.

"I've had a lot of time to think about it," she said. "And enough time now to have heard the way she talks about the two of you. About how you saved Shouyou." She nodded at him.

"Hitoka helped," Shouyou said immediately.

"I know," Shimizu said. "I've also been talking to Tendou. Wakatoshi may not be able to remember much, but Tendou remembers everything. And you were right." Shadows seemed to hang in her eyes. "The Overseer will never stop looking for them."

"Does this mean…" Kageyama started to say.

"There's no guarantee she would be able to bring Wakatoshi out of the hypnosis over the radio from the fort, not at that kind of range," Shimizu said. "And she wants this plan to work. More than anything."

"You'll help us!" Shouyou exclaimed.

"We'll set out with you tomorrow," Shimizu said.

Kageyama nodded. "That would change our odds a _lot."_

Shimizu managed a small smile. "Consider it a thank you." She looked at Shouyou again. "I think you know what it feels like, to be afraid so often and not know why. I hope, after this, that will finally be over with."

*

"Well, that seems like a warm welcome." Kageyama peered through the scope of his rifle, before passing it to Shouyou to look.

Shouyou brought the scope up to his eye, tracking it across the landscape—it was barren, devoid of trees, underbrush, grass. But it wasn't empty.

"That's a lot of deathclaws," he said.

The entrance to the Overseer's lair was well-hidden and well-defended—an underground bunker with a concealed entrance, in the midst of a deathclaw breeding ground.

"Not just a lot of deathclaws," Tendou said cheerfully. "A lot of _Vault controlled_ deathclaws! Raised from when they were adorable little eggs."

"Why do you sound happy?" Kageyama demanded.

"Because," Tendou said, smacking Wakatoshi on the back, "as long as we have Wakatoshi, we will be perfectly fine!"

Wakatoshi didn't react. He stared into the distance, his eyes empty, as though he were seeing nothing. Even though Shouyou knew Wakatoshi was under Hitoka's control, she was a safe distance away from the hideout with Shimizu as her guard, nowhere to be seen. It was easy to forget that the eerie trance Wakatoshi was under was her doing. Shouyou recalled that Tendou was all too used to seeing the other man this way, used to carrying out the Vault's bidding with his friend beside him, little more than a shell. Shouyou shivered, knowing his own eyes must have looked the same, even as he tried to crush the life from Kageyama.

The day had finally arrived for them to put an end to all of that, to make sure they would never fall into his hands again, and to free the countless others still under his control.

"How is he going to stop that many deathclaws?" Kageyama demanded. "I know he's strong, but nobody's that strong."

"He won't have to stop them," Tendou said. "As long as he's under the influence of the Vault frequency, they won't attack him. And I think they won't attack us, either."

"You _think,"_ Kageyama said.

"They never attacked me when I was with him before," Tendou said.

"How is that possible?" Kageyama asked.

A crackling sounded from the radio at Kageyama's waist. _"They're experiments, like us,"_ Hitoka mused. _"If they've been raised since they were eggs… the Vault must have found a frequency that works on deathclaws."_

Kageyama shuddered. "Great. Even more reason to shut this bastard down. Hitoka, Shimizu, you're in position?"

 _"We're secured,"_ Shimizu said.

 _"Once you're inside, I'll wake up Wakatoshi,"_ Hitoka said. _"Let me know when you're past the deathclaws."_

"We're moving," Kageyama confirmed.

Shouyou's stomach churned as they neared the hulking deathclaws, drew near enough to see how sharp their talon-tipped claws were. But even as they got close enough for the creatures to see them, they paid the group no mind. Wakatoshi led them forward, with Tendou following on his heels. Shouyou tensed all over as they passed the closest of the creatures, and it turned its head in his direction. But its eyes, like Wakatoshi's, seemed to be looking straight through him. The pounding of his heart lessened.

Then Kageyama, who brought up the rear of their party, rifle held at the ready, stepped past the first deathclaw.

The creature blinked, the lid of its yellow eye sliding sideways shut and open again. It looked directly at Kageyama.

"Ah, but…" Tendou said, sounding alarmed for the first time since Shouyou had met him, "we've never brought someone who wasn't from the Vault through before…"

"Shit," Kageyama muttered.

The deathclaw hunkered down and unleashed a blistering roar, right into his face. Without so much as flinching, Kageyama adjusted his grip on his rifle, took aim, and shot it through the eye.

Slowly, as though not comprehending what had happened, the deathclaw staggered on weakening legs and then fell, thundering to the ground as Kageyama stepped out of the way to avoid being crushed. That kill had been remarkably easy. They would never be as lucky with the rest of the creatures—and they were starting to wake up.

 _"Was that a gunshot?"_ Hitoka's voice crackled over the radio.

Kageyama took aim at another, firing at it, but it wasn't close or still enough. He hit it below the eye and the deathclaw shook off the impact as the bullet pinged off its impenetrable hide.

"Hitoka," Kageyama said, "we need Wakatoshi to wake up— _now!"_

"The entrance," Tendou said, "run for it—when we get close, it will—"

"They're faster than us," Kageyama said darkly. "Shouyou, BEHIND!"

Shouyou flung himself to the side as one of the monsters tried to tear into his back. He could practically smell its rotting breath, and hear the whistling of air as its teeth snapped closed around the space where he'd just been. They were out of time to coordinate. Stage one of the plan was progressing exceedingly terribly.

He saw the others split up as he took off, running from the deathclaw that had marked him as food. There was no use fighting in a group—they would be surrounded and swallowed up immediately. Together, they were a liability; but individually, all four of them were as dangerous as the beasts named for death itself.

Shouyou turned, to stare down the deathclaw that was now bearing down on him. The last time he'd met one, he'd still been next to helpless. Now, fortunately, the tables had turned.

He wasn't as fast, nor would he ever be again, not without the Vault controlling him to push his capabilities so far beyond what would be consciously possible—but now that his mind and his memories were synced up, he retained his old muscle memory, and that was more than enough.

As the deathclaw closed in, Shouyou rushed straight towards the bloodthirsty creature. He stepped in range of it and it lunged immediately, mouth gaping as it stretched to bite him in two, but he was faster. He threw himself forward, between its tall legs, and came out behind it. Before it could register where Shouyou had gone or stop its momentum to turn, he was up, using its tail to springboard himself onto its back. The spiky formations on its spine made easy handholds for him, until he had pulled himself up level with the back of its head and neck.

He reached for the weapons sheathed at his waist. Not guns—the Vault had never programmed him for fighting with those; instead, he pulled two wickedly sharp knives free, and, as the creature thrashed about beneath him, plunged them into the grooves between the armored plates on its neck, prying them up and away to reach the vulnerable muscle below.

The deathclaw's roar of outrage was earsplitting, as Shouyou struck it where it was weak, the long blades of each knife tearing into its neck. He grit his teeth, his arms shaking with the effort of his attack, footing slipping as the deathclaw tried in vain to fling him off. He refused to be shaken, driving the blades deeper and deeper, until finally, the damage he dealt overwhelmed the deathclaw. It began to stagger, twisting its head ferociously in pain and confusion, still trying to fling him off. But gradually, it slowed and collapsed to the earth, where it lay defeated and dying.

Shouyou gasped in air, feeling bile rise in his throat. He hadn't had time to plan or process his actions, only time to react—which felt a little bit too horribly like the way his mind worked when he was under the Vault's control. This time, however, he was aware of everything, acting on his own will to survive; and they were far from safe.

Desperately, Shouyou looked around for Kageyama. Across the landscape, his friends were fighting. Tendou danced with death, avoiding attacks by stepping in and out of the deathclaws' blind spots. From a distance, Shouyou could see how he misled them, leading them in circles and confusing them. Some distance away, Wakatoshi was fighting his own battle head to head with one of the creatures. Incredibly, his strength seemed to match theirs; Shouyou watched in terrified awe as he grappled one with his bare hands, and appeared to be _winning._

An explosion drew his attention. With a rush of fear, he saw Kageyama had been cornered—it seemed like he had drawn the attention of most of the deathclaws, maybe by being the first to be noticed, or because they could instinctively tell he did not belong to the Vault.

Kageyama was strong. Even without any special advantages, he had already killed a second deathclaw, its corpse crumpled near his position. But there were too many of the huge creatures bearing down on him at once, snapping aggressively at each other, trying to stake their claim as they eyed him.

Shouyou raced toward them. "Kageyama!"

A bolt of panic struck him as two of the deathclaws broke their stalemate to attack at once. A blinding burst of light went off as Kageyama detonated a flash bang grenade into the face of the one charging from his right, which fell back, disoriented. But he had no time to react before the second deathclaw was on him, slashing with its massive claws.

Shouyou screamed his name again as he watched Kageyama fell under the force of the blow—there came a loud clang of metal, as Kageyama tried to block the next blow with his rifle. The deathclaw knocked it out of his hands.

Heart pounding, Shouyou dove in front of Kageyama, knives held at the ready. There were too many deathclaws, too close. They weren't going to make it.

"Shouyou, no!" Kageyama shouted. "Get to the door! They'll kill you!"

The nearest deathclaw lunged again, and Shouyou raised his weapons to meet it—and then _something big_ blurred past in front of him, something gleaming and solid that appeared out of nowhere, to catch the onrushing jaws in bulky metal hands. With a thud, an enormous gatling gun fell to the ground beside Shouyou, dropped by the giant figure of metal as they struggled to keep the deathclaw at bay. Awed, Shouyou watched the scene before him.

"Shimizu!" Kageyama gasped, reaching for his rifle again. The figure turned its head to look at them.

"Shoot!" Shimizu's filtered voice shouted from inside the armor. "Now—!"

The deathclaw struggled violently and she turned back to face it. Painstakingly, she pried its jaws open wide, and Kageyama scrambled for his rifle, aiming from his position on the ground.

"Move!"

Shimizu jerked her head to the side and Kageyama fired. The bullet pierced through the roof of the deathclaws open mouth, and deep into its skull. It sagged instantly, dead.

Shimizu heaved its body to the side, tossing it onto the ground, then turned and grabbed Kageyama by the back of his coat, bodily lifting him back onto his feet. With her other hand she picked up the mini-gun again.

"Thanks," he panted. He pointed at her power armor. "Want one of those."

"We'll find you one," she told him. "If we survive this." The three of them squared up back to back. Shouyou spun his knives in his hand. There was no way he'd run. Between death, or letting Kageyama die, he knew which he would choose.

"Where's Hitoka?" he asked, realizing that without Shimizu on guard, Hitoka would be left alone.

"She's coming," Shimizu said tensely.

"She's _what?"_ Kageyama and Shouyou both asked in shock.

"She told me to buy her some time," Shimizu said. "She's—"

She cut off, interrupted by a guttural roar as the other deathclaws began to move in on them again. If they all attacked, then it would be over quickly, no matter how skilled at fighting Shouyou and the others were. But just before they could close in, something caught Shouyou's eye. A small figure beyond the attacking creatures, moving in from the distance, completely defenseless.

And then he realized, not defenseless. She was coming to save them all.

Hitoka approached, her radio held up high above her head. She moved shakily, her eyes glassy with fear, mouth trembling. But all around them, the deathclaws began to fall.

But it wasn't the crash to the earth, the loss of control that came with death—it was almost like they were bowing before her, lowering themselves to the ground, all under her influence.

"The frequency to control them," Shouyou said, as he realized what Hitoka was doing. "That's what she needed time for."

"She figured it out," Shimizu said, her voice heavy with relief. Wakatoshi and Tendou had stopped fighting, too, safe from the onslaught.

"A-are you all okay?" Hitoka called out to them.

"Hitoka," Shimizu said warmly, "you're a genius."

Hitoka smiled weakly. "Let's get inside."

There was no visible entrance to the Overseer's lair. But Tendou led them to an unmarked point in the dirt, glancing frequently at the surrounding landscape for some kind of marker Shouyou couldn't discern, until he stopped, motioning Wakatoshi closer. Kageyama stepped forward curiously and Tendou threw out a hand.

"Careful…" he said, and as Wakatoshi drew up in line with them, they saw why.

The ground split before them with a sound of rock grating on rock, opening up to reveal blackness, a yawning chasm below the earth. Narrow stairs plunged down into it, but if Kageyama had been standing just a foot or so forward, he would have toppled forward into the darkness.

It reminded Shouyou horribly of the dark cave entrance to the Vault, of the lightless prison from his childhood, and for a moment, he couldn't breathe, and the cold empty sound of what lay beyond rushed in his ears.

A hand thudded down on the back of his neck, and he startled, before he realized it was Kageyama's hand, gripping tightly, pulling him back to the present. On one side of Shouyou, Shimizu rested one large, metal hand gently on top of Hitoka's head as Hitoka swiped wetness from her eyes. On his other side, Tendou stood shoulder to shoulder with Wakatoshi, whose face was an unreadable mask.

"Down we go," Tendou murmured.

"I'm glad we came, after all," Shimizu said lightly. She towered above all their heads in the power armor. "I'd like a word with the Overseer."

"We end it here," Kageyama said to Shouyou.

Shouyou nodded at him and straightened up. When he took the first step, the others were right behind him.

The stairs were treacherous, dark and steep, seeming to wind down forever. Even the headlamp on the power armor suit did little to illuminate the way forward. But after a long descent, as even the air around them began to cool, the lamp finally shone on an ending—a heavy door with a large black number 84 scrawled on it in messy brushed ink. The letters still looked like they were dripping, even though they had long dried.

It was sealed shut in front of them. But like the door above, the low whirring sound of activation could be heard as Wakatoshi and Tendou stepped closer, the door seemingly able to identify their frequencies.

"Wait for my signal," Tendou said. "They'll be less likely to shoot me on sight. Wakatoshi, they'll expect you to be docile. Say nothing, don't move unless instructed."

"Understood," Wakatoshi confirmed.

Tendou's hands twitched anxiously at his sides, Shouyou noticed, but he stilled them as the door finished grating open. He stepped through into more darkness, Wakatoshi at his heels.

For a long, agonizing moment, the two were gone. Horrible thoughts began to race through Shouyou's head—Tendou and Wakatoshi had been gone for weeks, surely the Vault would be suspicious. Or what if—what if, after all this time, they were being led into a trap…

But then Tendou reappeared, so suddenly out of the shadows that it startled Shouyou. He looked paler than usual, and confused.

"Come," he said, motioning towards them. "Something… something's not right."

"When is anything ever right with these people?" Kageyama muttered, but, rifle raised, he followed with the rest.

Inside was nearly as dim as the stairwell. It still reminded Shouyou horribly of the moment he and Kageyama had stepped back inside the Vault, before everything had gone wrong. But this underground lair was not spotless and wiped of evidence, as the Vault had been. And it wasn't empty.

"What the hell happened here?" Kageyama murmured, lowering his gun.

It looked like the aftermath of a war, but there was no blood. There were people laying prone on the cold floor, slumped over tables, barely moving. Hitoka pushed past to run to where Wakatoshi knelt over a young woman, who was mumbling indiscernible words. As Shouyou and the others moved nearer, he caught some of what she was saying.

"...don't need… please… not an enforcer…"

Wakatoshi shook his head. There was a downward tilt to his brows, not quite pained, but a sadder expression than Shouyou had seen on him yet.

"I am not here to hurt anyone," he said. "Not anymore."

"Are you hurt?" Hitoka asked, taking the woman's hand.

Shouyou joined them, speaking softly. "Can she tell us what happened?"

As the woman's dull eyes saw Hitoka, then Shouyou, something like recognition flashed in their depths. She had already been shaky, but now she started to tremble, violently.

"Did you know?" she whispered. "Did you know that he is dying?"

"Who?" Hitoka asked.

"The one who sees."

"Overseer," Shouyou realized. "How?"

"Sick…" she said. "He got sick… and he told us… we had all been betrayed."

Shouyou and Hitoka exchanged a glance. "Do you think…" Shouyou said.

"Us, maybe," Hitoka said with a nod.

"He searched," the woman continued laboriously. "And when more left him—his patience with us ended. No more food… no more to drink…"

Tendou sat down heavily. "He never changes," he said, more to himself than the others. "His punishments… keep the rats in the dark, starve them…"

The woman began to cough, and with fumbling fingers, Hitoka pulled her water canteen from her side, opening it to put it to the woman's lips. But the woman jerked, a surprising remnant of strength surging from her weak body, to knock the water away.

"No," she hissed, "no. No more to drink… no more…"

Hitoka staggered to her feet, eyes wide and frightened. "He's in their heads. We have to—we have to make him shut it down, shut all of this down, or they'll all die no matter what we do."

"How do we find him?" Shouyou asked.

Hitoka looked around the room before spotting what she needed—a computer terminal, set into the wall. "There… I can find him with that."

It took Hitoka next to no time at all with an internal system to hack into; she made short work of mapping a layout of the complex, no matter what security measures they had put on it to hide it from prying eyes, and the route was laid out before them.

"Careless…" she murmured under her breath. "They were better at hiding things before."

"Or maybe they should not have made an enemy of you," Wakatoshi said in his even voice. Coming from him, Shouyou thought it might have been encouragement. Hitoka's mouth curved into something that was almost a smile.

The Overseer was hidden in the depths of the compound, isolated entirely even from the staff and security personnel. Once Shouyou might have thought this was due to secrecy only; but now he wondered whether it wasn't because the Overseer was afraid, perhaps, of the society he'd made. Now, more than ever, after they had defied him.

The underbelly of the complex seemed to go on forever, deeper and deeper—Shouyou wondered what it could have been, in the days before the fallout, or if it had been constructed for Vault 84 from the start. They might never find out, unless the answer was buried somewhere in the files on one of the computers. Shouyou wasn't sure he wanted to know, after it was all over, one way or another.

And then, after what felt like endless walking, they came to another identical metal door and Hitoka said, "This is it."

Shouyou stared at the door as the others readied themselves around Hitoka as she typed into the last computer terminal. As soon as they heard the hiss of the locks disengaging, Shimizu pulled Hitoka behind her. They stood to either side of the door frame, Kageyama, Shouyou, and Wakatoshi to the left, Tendou, Shimizu, and Hitoka on the right, waiting for the door to open fully.

It was quiet, when it did. There were no voices, no noises of people or weaponry being readied. Just the low, constant hum of machinery. Kageyama, leading with his rifle, cautiously looked through the doorway.

"There's… no one here," he said.

But that turned out not to be entirely correct. The inside of the room was familiar—too familiar, to Shouyou. With his memories restored, he could recognize it as the same type of room he and Hitoka had found themselves in when they had shut down the Vault frequency for the first time. The room was warm from the computer terminal housed inside it, panels upon panels of controls and switches, and monitors lining the walls, showing views of the entire facility.

Something shifted in the corner of the room, hidden in darkness, and they all swung around to face it defensively. Shimizu's headlamp lit the space.

There was a man lying there on the floor, thin and frail-looking. He held a gun in one hand, but his arm twitched uselessly by his side, as though he could not raise it. He stared at them all with glassy eyes, stunned speechless.

 _"You."_ Heedless of any danger, Kageyama stormed forward. The man shook his head frantically, but Kageyama bent down and grabbed the front of his long white shift, the same as Shouyou had once worn, hauling him into the air. "We've come to make you pay for all the things you've done!" When the man could only stammer in terror, Kageyama slammed him up against the wall in rage. "Overseer!"

"N-no!" the man wheezed. "Not… I'm—I'm not…"

"Bullshit, you're not!"

It was too underwhelming, to think this nondescript man quaking in his boots could be the Overseer. There had to be something else.

"If you're not him," Shouyou demanded, "then _where is he?"_

Upon seeing him, the man's eyes widened in something like fear. "You… you're the one… Hinata…"

Shouyou flinched at his other name and Kageyama growled, closing one hand around the man's throat.

"This is it," Kageyama said, grip squeezing tighter. "If we kill him, it's all over, right?"

But the man clawed at his hand desperately. "I'm… only the caretaker…" he said. "The Overseer… wants to speak to you. He has waited for you."

"Then where is he?" Kageyama shouted. His fingers trembled with murderous intent.

"There," the man said. He looked past Kageyama, trying to raise a feeble hand. "He's there."

Shouyou turned, to follow his gaze. So did the others. They found themselves staring into the faint green glow of the computer monitor.

"What does that mean?" Shouyou heard Kageyama ask angrily. "Is he gone? Did he run? That weak, pathetic—"

"Wait…" Shouyou said. There was something written on the screen, and as he approached it, the words became clearer. "No, wait…"

There was a message left on the monitor. A single line of text, vivid green on black, the cursor blinking at the end of the line:

** YOU CAME HOME. **

Shouyou stood frozen, staring at it. He didn't want to consider what he was seeing. He took a step backwards, unconsciously, then another, until he was stumbling back from the computer, knocking into Kageyama. Everything he knew, had known, since he was a child, was coming together in his mind to form an understanding.

The simulations, the sterility, the disregard for human life. The chain of command, the mystery behind the one in charge of it all. The destruction of the original computer terminal in the Vault that had caused things to go haywire, and the resulting sickness. And the sudden collapse of the Vault society, in the recent weeks since Hitoka had been systematically disrupting the Overseer's control, freeing first Shouyou, then Wakatoshi.

Everything had been precisely executed, predicted by the frequencies, to program them for maximum efficiency.

"This can't—" Shouyou tried to speak, but the words were like ash in his mouth, "how, _how_ did no one ever—"

"It's not a person…" Hitoka whispered. "Overseer is a program."

A new line of text appeared below the first:

** HOW COULD I BE ANYTHING ELSE? **

"This can't be it." Shouyou shook his head. He couldn't believe it, he couldn't bring himself to accept this. "Everything we went through," he said, voice rising, "everything you put me through, put _all of us_ through. The people you made me—everything _you_ made me do! That was for _this?"_

No more writing appeared. Shouyou couldn't stand it. It was too much like the same silence he'd grown up dreading, the one that always pulsed with the undertones of the Overseer's frequency.

"This can't be _all you are!"_ he shouted. His words hung in the air, and when the next words came scrolling across the screen, they were loud against the quiet hum of the machine.

** IT IS EVERYTHING WE ALL ARE. **

** BECAUSE THEY CREATED ME TO SHAPE YOU. **

Hitoka stepped up beside Shouyou. "Who?" she asked. "Why did they create you?"

If they asked, it would tell them, it seemed. The words clipped fast and succinct on the monitor; an explanation, one Shouyou could barely stand to see revealed.

** THE ONES WHO CAME BEFORE. BEFORE THE BOMBS. BEFORE VAULTS. **

**THEY WANTED ME TO CREATE PERFECTION FROM HUMANITY. **

"Perfection?!" Shouyou asked. "That's what you call that? The Vault was hell! I would rather die than go back to that life!"

** I ADJUSTED THE PARAMETERS AS MY PROGRAMMING DICTATED. **

** MY MOST DIFFICULT DIRECTIVE WAS TO ERADICATE THE FLAWS INHERENT TO YOUR SPECIES. **

** I HAD TO IMPLEMENT PROCEDURES PROVEN TO PROMOTE OBEDIENCE. **

** I CULTIVATED STRENGTH. I CULLED WEAKNESS. MY GOAL WAS WITHIN REACH. **

** UNTIL THE VIRUS. **

"The sickness," Hitoka murmured. She was far calmer than Shouyou, seemed to be handling this much better, but he had a feeling that was due to the difference in their personalities—in their programming. He had been molded to fight. She had been made to understand. "How did it begin?"

** IN THE EVENT THAT I WAS BETRAYED BY MY TEST SUBJECTS, THE EXPERIMENT WOULD END. **

** IF I COULD NOT BE PERFECT, LOGICALLY, NOTHING I CREATED COULD EVER ACHIEVE PERFECTION. **

** HINATA. YACHI. **

** MY TWO MOST SIGNIFICANT EXPERIMENTS TO DATE. MY NEAREST SUCCESSES. **

** YOU OVERTHEW YOUR PROGRAMMING. YOU REWROTE MY CODE. ** **YOU TRIGGERED THE VIRUS. **

** I AM DYING, AND WITH ME, THE SOCIETY I BUILT.**

"But—all these people," Hitoka said, a frantic note entering her voice, "they're _actually_ dying, they're starving to death. These are human _lives,_ they're still important!"

** THE EXPERIMENT FAILED. **

** IT IS TOO LATE TO STOP IT. **

** IT IS NOT MY CHOICE. **

"IT'S NOT _THEIR_ CHOICE EITHER!" Shouyou yelled, pressure snapping in his chest. He turned, and grabbed Kageyama's rifle from his hands, to take aim at the computer console. "I put you down once, you evil piece of shit—"

"Wait!" Tendou broke his silence, throwing himself in front of the gun.

 _"Move,"_ Shouyou said.

 _"Think_ first, for once," Tendou told him. "Remember what happened last time. If we shut it down now, we have no idea what could happen. _You_ escaped the Vault, but for those of us that didn't… things got worse." Wakatoshi nodded his agreement.

"He's right," Hitoka said, her voice hollow. "We could destroy it and everyone might still starve themselves to death. The only way I can do anything now… is to let it run. And try to start reversing the programming."

Shouyou tightened his grip on the rifle as his eyes pricked hot, vision blurring. "We were supposed to end this," he said. He didn't want to back down; he didn't want to lower the gun.

"Wouldn't it have always come to this, though?" Tendou asked. "Overseer or not, I don't know what I'll be… if this part of myself gets shut down."

Shouyou grit his teeth as he realized Tendou was right. He and Hitoka were lucky, to have broken the Overseer's hold the way they had. Not everyone had that freedom. Many of the people they wanted to save were still stuck in limbo, prisoner to the Overseer's machinations and calculated cruelty. Shouyou lowered the rifle, and Kageyama took it from him. Furiously, he swiped at his tears.

What had been resolved this way, if anything? There was no one to hold accountable, no one to fix anything, to put people back to normal. The Overseer was nothing more than a simulation running a simulation, and its original creators were long dead.

Kageyama pulled Shouyou's hands away from his face, lifting his fingers to brush away the wetness there, touch lingering on Shouyou's cheeks warmly for a brief moment. And realization struck Shouyou.

This was the Wasteland. Inside the Vault or out of it, it was unforgiving, offering little chance of survival for anyone. The Wasteland cared little for fairness, for righting wrongs. But Shouyou had learned that if they tried hard enough to defy the nature of it, they could sometimes, by shedding blood and tears, grasp at ways to live.

Shouyou had found Kageyama, despite everything. That was a better start than most would ever get.

"Maybe," Shouyou said finally, trying to keep his voice from shaking, "this is how we start to figure everything out."

Hitoka held out her hand to him and he took it and squeezed it for encouragement. She held his gaze and he nodded, their minds made up both independently, and together. Hitoka took a deep breath.

"I'm going to try," she said, "to take over from the Overseer."

More blunt words appeared as a response on the computer display:

** THE PROTOCOLS HAVE BEEN ACTIVATED. YOU CANNOT SAVE EVERYONE. **

** I CALCULATE A VERY LOW POSSIBLE RATE OF SUCCESS. **

"Well, that's the difference between us," Hitoka said, leaning over the keyboard. "We never cared about being perfect. We just wanted to be ourselves."

"Can you shut down this bastard's ability to talk, at the very least?" Kageyama asked.

The green glow of the screen lit Hitoka's face as a smile spread across it. _"That_ I can definitely do."

*

When all was said and done, Fort Sun had to undergo a series of major expansions.

In order to house and feed so many new people, they needed to expand the perimeter considerably, build row upon row of new cabins, till acres of Earth for land to grow the crops they'd need. They would have to establish trusted trade routes between other settlements for the first time.

But they had many, many more hands to lend help than ever before. So in the end, it worked out more than alright.

Some months later, after learning the truth about the Vault, things at Fort Sun were beginning to fall into place. Shouyou couldn't say it had settled; and given the nature of its inhabitants, he wasn't sure it ever truly would. But they were starting to make a home exist there that was more than they'd ever been allowed before.

It hadn't all been without tension, or even danger. There were some people they'd rescued from the Vault who couldn't break free from the Overseer's grip. Some hadn't been able to resist the urge to die along with him; others were violent, seeing it as a betrayal to the Vault to accept Hitoka's or Shouyou's help. They believed they deserved to be exiled to the Wasteland, and so they left the fort and ventured into the wild to fend for themselves. Maybe someday, Shouyou hoped, they would return. They were all strong. They might survive.

But inside the walls of Fort Sun, those who stayed finally had the chance to unlearn what they thought they knew. Hitoka had the hardest job of all: reversing the Overseer's influence and sorting through years and years of stored and buried files, the memories of all the people they had rescued, in order to help them understand what had been done to them, or what they'd been forced to do. It was a long process, often painful; no one knew that better than Shouyou himself. Some people even chose not to see everything, in the end. But in all the people he and Hitoka and Kageyama and the others helped, he noticed a common thread—none of it was too big a price to pay for finally being allowed to escape the underground halls of the Vault, to live out under the sky and breathe more than just recycled air.

For the most part, life was peaceful. But the dangers of the Wasteland were always at their doorstep, never too far off.

On a blue sky day, Shouyou sat in the dirt with a group of Vault children, shielding his eyes from the sun's glare and finding shapes in the clouds. He closed his eyes, feeling the heat on his face, the midday sun almost too hot.

It never got old.

"Shouyou!" someone called out.

Shouyou glanced over from where he'd been helping with the farming—or, more accurately, _not_ helping. Cursing under his breath, he shooed the kids away to try and hide evidence of his lax behavior. They scrambled, giggling uncontrollably.

It was only Yamaguchi approaching, however, and Shouyou raised a hand in greeting. He and Tsukishima split their time between Fort Sun and the clinic in Smog City, now. Kageyama's debt was all paid off, so Tsukishima no longer had that as a convenient excuse for his semi-permanent home at the fort. No one called him out on it, at least not much. There was lots of work to be done in both locations, and the doctors' expertise was invaluable.

"There's someone here asking for Kageyama," Yamaguchi told him. "Seems like it could be a new job—Kageyama told me to find you."

Shouyou hurried to the shed they'd set up in the fort as a makeshift meeting room. A pair of travelers he'd never met were relaying their story to Kageyama, who listened attentively, rubbing at his chin contemplatively. They didn't notice Shouyou come in right away, which meant he had a brief moment to watch Kageyama—sleeves rolled to his elbows, brow furrowed in thought, tall and strong as ever. Even though he was no longer a wanderer, folks knew where to find him. When trouble sprang up, he was still often the first name that came to mind to take on the job.

Slowly but surely, Shouyou's name was starting to crop up second.

"What've we got?" he asked, approaching the group. Kageyama turned to him.

"Mid-size settlement just south of Creekvalley. They were attacked by super mutants recently—mostly evacuated, but they had a large population of farmers and traders, not a lot of fighters among them." He looked back at the men. "So you're looking for someone to help clear them out."

"They're vicious," one of the men said. "Cannibals, huge—"

"Yeah, we're familiar with the sort," Kageyama said.

"How many people would we need to hire to take care of it?" the man asked him desperately. "We're willing to pay you good money!"

"Just the two of us," Shouyou said. "Can't spare that many people from the fort for long."

Kageyama was already poring over the map in the shed, clearly devising a best route to the settlement. The men stared at them.

"Just… just two of you?" one asked. "This—this is a very dangerous—"

"We've dealt with worse," Shouyou reassured them.

"I don't like to split my pay," Kageyama called from where he stood.

"Oy, you have to split it with _me,_ Kageyama—"

"Depends on how well you pull your weight."

Shouyou glared at him, considering their options.

Creekvalley was at least a few days' walk from Fort Sun; this meant a long stretch of road and woodland, radio buzzing between faint station signals during the day, and firelit camping in what dilapidated shelter they could find at night. It likely meant danger, and watching each other's backs. It meant discovering new ways they moved and fought in sync. It meant calling on all the skills at their disposal necessary to make it out in the Wasteland.

Shouyou glanced over at Kageyama, caught his eye, snuck him a grin. He turned back to the men.

"We'll take the job!" he said brightly.

Nervously, the men looked at each other, before nodding. Shouyou held out his hand to shake on it.

He couldn't wait to get back out there.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Living for you, is easy living.  
> It's easy to live when you're in love.  
> And, I'm so in love,  
> [There's nothing in life, but you.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX7TA3ezjHc&list=PL_dZzj4H0GQKP--78TbXjzrLvctheSFQw&index=17)
> 
> \--
> 
> ([THIS](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/9/9b/Art_of_Fo4_T-60_power_armor_CA.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20151029192553) is Kiyoko's power armor btw :D)
> 
> HEY EVERYONE! This is the official end of the Wasteland story (ahhh I can't believe)! I may come back to drop more little vignettes in for this series, as I do, but right now I'm just so pumped to have reached my happy ending for these characters, as they have been through so much. They deserve a rest!!! 
> 
> Thanks so so much to all the wonderful people who have reached the end of this story with me -- it's been one of my biggest plot-y endeavors out of all the fics I've written, and it was so much fun getting to share these twists and turns with you all. And thanks Ellie and RC for cheerleading me through all my spirals about trying to reach the end of this. It was real tough making everything work at times, but I'm finally here ^^
> 
> Hope to see you all soon, in whatever the next adventure may be!

**Author's Note:**

> [I'm [@esselley](http://esselley.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, [@Esselle_hq](https://twitter.com/Esselle_hq) on Twitter]


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